AIA SOMERSET CONFERENCE - 9 th to 14th August 2019
Report by Anna Alexander
Five MIHS members attended this year’s conference in advance of the Merseyside AIA conference next year. Some of us were there to observe and get some tips on how the conference is run, and along the way we attended some interesting lectures and went on the field trips.
Friday was the first day of the conference with an AIA seminar: “Tourism and Industrial Archaeology and Heritage”, led by Professor Marilyn Palmer. This included talks on industrial heritage strategy and networks, European industrial heritage and Chinese railway museums. In the evening the Chairman of Somerset Industrial Archaeology Society (SIAS) set the scene for the coming days, with an excellent introduction to the industrial archaeology of Somerset.
The title for his talk “Puttees to Pantiles, Horsehair to Helicopters, Billhooks to Babycham, Twine to Tar Boilers”, captured the range of industries in Somerset over the last few hundred years. Indeed, although the county is known mainly for agriculture, there have been a large number of industries operating in Somerset, ranging from coal mines, iron works, copper and lead mines, to gloving, silk, wool and lace, bricks and tiles, shirts and collars, and zinc, ochre and calamine production. Peter said that the drivers of industry were weak, so what he amusingly nicknamed “CUBA” - The County that Used to Be Avon - remained an agricultural area. The drivers of demand for the products of these industries were also weak, so only remnants of the successful industries remain.
Saturday dawned with a programme of lectures in the morning and an afternoon of AIA business. David Greenfield lectured on I.K. Brunel in Somerset, focussing on Brunel and his bridge building and his often difficult relationship with fellow engineer William Gravatt. The speaker followed their relationship through the projects they worked on, using their correspondence to highlight their problems in working together. Apparently Gravatt had poor social skills and was a poor manager, not helpful when managing men and large projects.
Denis Dodd then took us through a history of the Grand Western Canal and its part in the development of early canal lifts. He spent some time talking about the history of canals and boat lifts, and went on to describe the different types of boat lifts which included a crane lift, used in China, a balance lock, a diving lock, and a flotation lock. This was the most interesting part of his talk but unfortunately he ran out of time and he moved swiftly through his final slides.
After coffee, Richard Sims took us back to the days of sailing ships in his talk “Coker Canvas - Sailcloth bucked in the yarn not the piece”. The geology of the East and West Coker areas of Somerset lends itself to the growing of hemp and flax which was used to make sailcloth. It was very much a cottage industry in terms of where the work was done and by whom, as women did a lot of the basic stages of the manufacturing process in their homes. Photographs from World War One showed women working at “pulling” flax, “retting” the flax, breaking and crushing the stems of the flax in “Bolling mills”, “scutching” – which is the removal of the woody parts, “combing and hackling” – to separate the fibres, spinning the yarn, “buckling “ the yarn by treating it in baths of alkaline lye. The buckling houses were built near water for convenience of the process and yarn barns were often grouped together for this reason. In the early days of the industry, sailcloth was woven by hand on Dutch looms. The speaker went into the history of the weaving of sailcloth and the different types of weave needed for different sails. With the coming of steamships, sail makers disappeared, apart from those that made sails for yachts. West Coker changed from sail making to the spinning of twine, and this is an industry which is celebrated in a visitor centre there.
Shane Gould, who works for Historic England, was next to speak to us, this time on the Somerset coal field. There used to be 66 collieries in three Somerset valleys - Nettlebridge, Cam and Radstock. The coalfields had very shallow seams, and we were shown the humps from primitive mine workings which are impossible to date. Once steam was introduced, mining became more intensive with water powered pumping stations. The speaker discussed the various colliery sites, including the Vobster colliery, and spoke of the dangers inherent in the industry such as fire damp and explosions and how such disasters led to improvements in safety. Shane also discussed the transport industries associated with coal production and the social history of coal mining.
After lunch, the AIA reported on the restoration grants it has awarded to various different projects. There were also awards presented to individuals for their work in areas such as commercial and voluntary society publications, and an award for a master’s degree dissertation. Following this Cristina Merciu from Romania, presented her work on “Postcards as effective images of Romanian Industrial Heritage” - John Ryan you would have loved this!
The evening was devoted to the conference annual dinner, which was held at Taunton racecourse - an excellent meal in a great venue. Sunday morning started with AIA council member Bill Barksfield reporting on the association’s overseas tour to Hungary earlier this year and of plans for a visit to Poland next year.
Malcolm Verity and I were then centre stage to present the MIHS plans for next year’s conference. We were warmly received and this was an excellent way to drum up interest for our own conference from this year’s delegates. After the AIA AGM, the annual Rolt memorial lecture was presented by Dr Peter Stanier, who is known for his work on quarrying. His subject was “Landscapes Without Machines – Remembering the Little Things”. Peter’s abiding interest and expertise is in granite, and we were taken through a fascinating and amusing description of the quarrying and uses of the stone. Granite is found in Devon and Cornwall, the Scilly Islands and Lundy Island, and one can tell where particular granite has been quarried by the pattern of the stone. It was the mid-18th century when granite started to be worked seriously, and it became very important in civil engineering in places such as the dockyards because of its strength.
By 1840 the leading quarry contractor was John Freeman and his firm and his business operated up to the 20th century when the arrival of Norwegian granite led to the collapse of the industry. Quarries could not exist without the canals and railways, which helped to open up new markets for the industry. Granite was exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Peter went on to describe the many uses of the stone, for the use in monuments such as Nelson’s Column, buildings, dockyards, lighthouses including Bishop Rock and the Tyne Pier and Fastnet lighthouses. It has been used in bridges, river walls such as the Thames embankment, fortifications such as Southsea castle. Peter enlisted the support of Marilyn Palmer for his party piece, which was to pull in on a trolley a 13.5 x 4 cubic feet (one ton) block of granite. We were fooled for perhaps 5 seconds when it was realised that it was just a large box covered in granite-coloured Fablon. Well done Peter! His talk continued through the various uses of granite, and concluded on a description of the Alfred the Great memorial in Winchester and the effort taken to create the plinth on which Alfred’s bronze statue stands.
After lunch the IA field trips began, with a choice of three on the Sunday afternoon and two each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We will probably use the same pattern in 2020.
Report by Anna Alexander
Five MIHS members attended this year’s conference in advance of the Merseyside AIA conference next year. Some of us were there to observe and get some tips on how the conference is run, and along the way we attended some interesting lectures and went on the field trips.
Friday was the first day of the conference with an AIA seminar: “Tourism and Industrial Archaeology and Heritage”, led by Professor Marilyn Palmer. This included talks on industrial heritage strategy and networks, European industrial heritage and Chinese railway museums. In the evening the Chairman of Somerset Industrial Archaeology Society (SIAS) set the scene for the coming days, with an excellent introduction to the industrial archaeology of Somerset.
The title for his talk “Puttees to Pantiles, Horsehair to Helicopters, Billhooks to Babycham, Twine to Tar Boilers”, captured the range of industries in Somerset over the last few hundred years. Indeed, although the county is known mainly for agriculture, there have been a large number of industries operating in Somerset, ranging from coal mines, iron works, copper and lead mines, to gloving, silk, wool and lace, bricks and tiles, shirts and collars, and zinc, ochre and calamine production. Peter said that the drivers of industry were weak, so what he amusingly nicknamed “CUBA” - The County that Used to Be Avon - remained an agricultural area. The drivers of demand for the products of these industries were also weak, so only remnants of the successful industries remain.
Saturday dawned with a programme of lectures in the morning and an afternoon of AIA business. David Greenfield lectured on I.K. Brunel in Somerset, focussing on Brunel and his bridge building and his often difficult relationship with fellow engineer William Gravatt. The speaker followed their relationship through the projects they worked on, using their correspondence to highlight their problems in working together. Apparently Gravatt had poor social skills and was a poor manager, not helpful when managing men and large projects.
Denis Dodd then took us through a history of the Grand Western Canal and its part in the development of early canal lifts. He spent some time talking about the history of canals and boat lifts, and went on to describe the different types of boat lifts which included a crane lift, used in China, a balance lock, a diving lock, and a flotation lock. This was the most interesting part of his talk but unfortunately he ran out of time and he moved swiftly through his final slides.
After coffee, Richard Sims took us back to the days of sailing ships in his talk “Coker Canvas - Sailcloth bucked in the yarn not the piece”. The geology of the East and West Coker areas of Somerset lends itself to the growing of hemp and flax which was used to make sailcloth. It was very much a cottage industry in terms of where the work was done and by whom, as women did a lot of the basic stages of the manufacturing process in their homes. Photographs from World War One showed women working at “pulling” flax, “retting” the flax, breaking and crushing the stems of the flax in “Bolling mills”, “scutching” – which is the removal of the woody parts, “combing and hackling” – to separate the fibres, spinning the yarn, “buckling “ the yarn by treating it in baths of alkaline lye. The buckling houses were built near water for convenience of the process and yarn barns were often grouped together for this reason. In the early days of the industry, sailcloth was woven by hand on Dutch looms. The speaker went into the history of the weaving of sailcloth and the different types of weave needed for different sails. With the coming of steamships, sail makers disappeared, apart from those that made sails for yachts. West Coker changed from sail making to the spinning of twine, and this is an industry which is celebrated in a visitor centre there.
Shane Gould, who works for Historic England, was next to speak to us, this time on the Somerset coal field. There used to be 66 collieries in three Somerset valleys - Nettlebridge, Cam and Radstock. The coalfields had very shallow seams, and we were shown the humps from primitive mine workings which are impossible to date. Once steam was introduced, mining became more intensive with water powered pumping stations. The speaker discussed the various colliery sites, including the Vobster colliery, and spoke of the dangers inherent in the industry such as fire damp and explosions and how such disasters led to improvements in safety. Shane also discussed the transport industries associated with coal production and the social history of coal mining.
After lunch, the AIA reported on the restoration grants it has awarded to various different projects. There were also awards presented to individuals for their work in areas such as commercial and voluntary society publications, and an award for a master’s degree dissertation. Following this Cristina Merciu from Romania, presented her work on “Postcards as effective images of Romanian Industrial Heritage” - John Ryan you would have loved this!
The evening was devoted to the conference annual dinner, which was held at Taunton racecourse - an excellent meal in a great venue. Sunday morning started with AIA council member Bill Barksfield reporting on the association’s overseas tour to Hungary earlier this year and of plans for a visit to Poland next year.
Malcolm Verity and I were then centre stage to present the MIHS plans for next year’s conference. We were warmly received and this was an excellent way to drum up interest for our own conference from this year’s delegates. After the AIA AGM, the annual Rolt memorial lecture was presented by Dr Peter Stanier, who is known for his work on quarrying. His subject was “Landscapes Without Machines – Remembering the Little Things”. Peter’s abiding interest and expertise is in granite, and we were taken through a fascinating and amusing description of the quarrying and uses of the stone. Granite is found in Devon and Cornwall, the Scilly Islands and Lundy Island, and one can tell where particular granite has been quarried by the pattern of the stone. It was the mid-18th century when granite started to be worked seriously, and it became very important in civil engineering in places such as the dockyards because of its strength.
By 1840 the leading quarry contractor was John Freeman and his firm and his business operated up to the 20th century when the arrival of Norwegian granite led to the collapse of the industry. Quarries could not exist without the canals and railways, which helped to open up new markets for the industry. Granite was exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Peter went on to describe the many uses of the stone, for the use in monuments such as Nelson’s Column, buildings, dockyards, lighthouses including Bishop Rock and the Tyne Pier and Fastnet lighthouses. It has been used in bridges, river walls such as the Thames embankment, fortifications such as Southsea castle. Peter enlisted the support of Marilyn Palmer for his party piece, which was to pull in on a trolley a 13.5 x 4 cubic feet (one ton) block of granite. We were fooled for perhaps 5 seconds when it was realised that it was just a large box covered in granite-coloured Fablon. Well done Peter! His talk continued through the various uses of granite, and concluded on a description of the Alfred the Great memorial in Winchester and the effort taken to create the plinth on which Alfred’s bronze statue stands.
After lunch the IA field trips began, with a choice of three on the Sunday afternoon and two each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We will probably use the same pattern in 2020.