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Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
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 Posted -
17/05/2004
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11:38
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Extract from the Association for Industrial Archaeology Bulletin. Vol. 6. Number 2. 1978
Record before we regret.
The urgency of recording industrial sites before they are swept away or altered beyond recognition is a theme often reiterated at conferences and adult education classes. Too often industrial archaeologists begin to take an interest only when plans for closure of a plant have already been announced, and there is a frantic scramble to collect items of machinery which will disappear into a museum store, there to languish for years while plans for a gallery of local industry are tossed around. When the embodiment of these pious intentions eventually materialises, one or two machines will be proudly unveiled to represent a local industry now defunct; but divorced from their proper context they can hardly communicate much of the impact which a visit to the working factory would have conveyed.
Foremost among the published aims of the AIA is to encourage improved standards of recording, and the Seminar which was organised jointly with the Oral History Society in Birmingham on 11 November underlined the importance of working people as the most ephemeral and most precious element in industrial history. One of the speakers, Stanley Graham, worked as a lorry driver for twenty years before taking over the running of one of Lancashire's last steam mill engines. He has no sentimental illusions about keeping such mills open beyond their economic life for the benefit of antiquarians. There will be no shortage of hardware by which to remember the Lancashire cotton industry; what Stanley Graham sees disappearing irrevocably all around him are the first-hand experiences of those who worked in the industry at its height in the early years of the present century. Men like 97-year old Billy Brooks who began work as a weaver in 1891 at the age of ten and still recalls vividly the celebrations of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Stanley Graham has photographed every aspect of the weaving process in his mill, and is now coupling this archive with a series of recorded interviews with those who have worked with Lancashire cotton all their lives. He has written the following piece for the Bulletin to underline what he sees as the urgency with which such recording work must be tackled.
It is the occupational hazard of the amateur that he often has to tell his grandmother how he thinks the eggs should be sucked. I find myself in this position now. There are a few seeds I would like to sow in your collective minds but before doing so wish to assure you that these ideas are not thrust on you in arrogance but proffered in humility.
1 come into frequent contact with enthusiasts and well meaning amateurs. I should explain that I run a steam engine commercially, in other words we make money and if we don’t we stop. The visitors are impressed by the machine and fascinated by the old-fashioned processes in the factory. The question most commonly asked is “When will it be scrapped?” or “Has anyone done anything about preserving it!” The artefact rules, OK.
How many of the professional Industrial Archaeologists think differently? I know there are many and the number grows all the time, but there are many who don't. It seems to me that there are far too few who have realised that the resources wasting away fastest are the vast amounts of human experience lost with the death of old craftsmen and skilled artisans.
1 can hear the rustle of greying hair as the collective heads shake but is this statement so far from the truth? Walk into any museum in the land and pick out an old machine. Then find the curator and ask him what is known about the machine and its operation. The odds are that you will receive plenty of information about who made the machine and how many horsepower was needed to drive it but nothing about the practicalities of running it. This is true of the published histories. I am sure that the main reason is that the men who wrote the books were not the men who ran the machines.
This was understandable in days gone by when the only tools available were the sketch pad and the notebook. Today we have the 35mm camera and the tape recorder and things are better and so books in future will have the practical side as well. Or will they?
This state of affairs was first brought home to me by the necessity to obtain information on the practical running of steam engines. This was forced on me by the fact that I found I had one to run and practical help was thin on the ground. Always a great believer in the written word I went to the library and put in my requests. Books flowed in with monotonous regularity from Boston Spa and I soon became an expert on the design, construction and indicating of steam engines, especially the indicating. I could write a thesis on the traps contained in the thousands of words written on indicating.
Formulae and mathematics abounded but I was no nearer the actual day-to-day nitty gritty information that I needed. At this point 1 started using my head and went out and found myself a genuine, 100%, copper-bottomed, hairy-backed steam engineer. A few meaningful interviews with him resulted in two things, first I found out all I wanted to know. Second, I found I had made a firm friend mainly by listening and paying him the compliment of trusting his experience.
All this was a fair time ago and as I haven't had a runaway or a crop of hot bearings it looks as though my informant might have done a good job. My search for knowledge had whetted the appetite for history that had long been suppressed by the need to earn a living, and I began to think that it was perhaps time I did something about the things I considered to be wrong instead of just moaning about them. I started to photograph the people in the mill using their skills in the old processes which have almost died out. This developed into a large 'folio and was well received by certain men of quality who persuaded me to go a stage further and add tapes with people describing in their own words what they were doing. The result is a clear, factual description of how to do these jobs. It would be possible to learn the basics of the job from this material. This would seem to be to be the ideal way of doing the job. It has cine film beaten because you can spend as much time looking at one particular frame as you want without loss of quality. Anyone who has ever tried to do this with cine film will vouch for the fact that the loss of definition is such as to make this difficult.
This then is the axe I want to grind. I believe that a lot of the time, effort and money that at present goes into the collection and preservation of artefacts could more usefully be employed in saving the old skills for posterity before some of them vanish completely.
I admit to being biased. I find the detached, objective role very difficult but I believe I have something to offer. I am sincere and my work is practical and cost-effective. It also has the great merit that it is based on a wide experience of the people and machines I love so much. Another small point in its favour is that up to now it has cost no one else a penny, I have supported the costs myself. Hopefully this may change in the future. A lot depends on the reception given to it.
I believe we have a great opportunity to do good in this field. I also believe that historians in the future will find it very hard to forgive us if we miss out. The buck stops here.
Editor's note:
The recording project described above was mounted in the nick-of-time, as it turns out. In the few weeks since Stanley Graham’s words were written, it has been announced that the unit in Barnoldswick will weave out before the end of 1978. The last steam mill in Pendle wil1 thus follow so many other Lancashire spinning and weaving mills into oblivion - except that in this case photographic and sound records of the work of the mill will survive it at the Department of Regional Studies, University of Lancaster and at the Science Museum.
[This journal is not dated precisely but was late 1978]
SCG/23 February 2003
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Record before we regret
