Welcome to the Industrial Heritage Networks and Support website. This site is maintained and updated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust who run the project and the networks. We aim to support industrial heritage in England through networking, information exchange, guidance, and training. Please explore the website and please contribute! For more information you can … Read more Welcome to the IHNs website!
The next three in-person meetings of the Industrial Heritage Networks will be taking place on the 16 and 30 November, and on 13 December 2023. These will be for the London, North East England, and North West England networks. These free events will be the first in-person meetings for these networks since the COVID pandemic, and are being held at the Museum of Docklands in London, Land of Iron at the Cleveland Ironstone Mining, and the Lion Saltworks in Cheshire.
Like the other seven IHN groups in England, these in-person events are designed to bring together those industrial heritage sites open to the public in each region, and local groups and individuals working or volunteering on industrial archaeology and heritage subjects and sites in the area. The format will be a round-table discussion in the morning with a tour of the site in the afternoon.
Details on how to book these free events on Eventbrite can be found here:
Barnsley Museums and Barnsley Council have launched their new vision for the historic Elsecar Ironworks site, including the re-establishment of a heritage railway and much more. They would like to thank everyone who has shared ideas and thoughts already about this very special historic site with a proud history, which is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, thanks to our Heritage Action Zone Partnership with Historic England.
The future vision for the former ironworks includes:
New heritage railway destination, including a reconstructed 1849 Fitzwilliam locomotive, powered by sustainable fuels
New rail college and rail technology test track, training more than 400 students each year
Advanced engineering workshops showcasing the region’s innovation
New ‘Cultural Canteen’ and outdoor events and performance area, against the spectacular backdrop of the ironworks furnaces and restored blast wall
Active Travel Hub and Cycle Hire, to enable families and visitors to travel to Elsecar, and explore the Elsecar Valley, on foot and by bike
Barnsley Museums and Barnsley Council look forward to inviting everyone, starting with local residents, to special events, activities and tours in the New Year to discuss how this vision could be taken forward. It will take time to make the new development a reality and to secure funding to make it happen, but they are confident of being able to do so, and all the positive benefits it will mean for our region.
The proposed development is in addition to works due to start in Spring 2024 to The New Yard and The Ironworks events building, for which funding has already been secured from the Cultural Development Fund.
For more information, to watch a film about these proposals, and read a vision document and frequently-asked questions, please see: www.elsecar-heritage.com/forging-ahead
In October 2023 the UK Government secured the final changes to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, after 16 months of debate and drafting in Parliament. This means that several heritage provisions have now become law. The most significant for industrial archaeology and heritage sites, and archaeology in general, is a provision that secures statutory status for Historic Environment Records (HER).
Historic England describes HERs as ‘sources of, and signposts to, information relating to landscapes, buildings, monuments, sites, places, areas and archaeological finds spanning more than 700,000 years of human endeavour. Based mainly in local authorities, they are used for planning and development control but they also fulfil an educational role.’ The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act makes it a legal requirement that each local authorities in England maintains an HER for its area. Further detail can be found here: https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/hpg/heritage-assets/hers/
The passing of the Act concludes a long advocacy campaign by many archaeological bodies, including the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers, and the Council for British Archaeology, supported by many others, such as the Association for Industrial Archaeology, to secure statutory HERs. This provision was first proposed in the failed 2008 Heritage Protection Bill. HERs were made statutory in Wales in 2016.
Thanks must be given to Historic England, who have advised Government on the relevance of HERs to levelling-up and the establishment of a more digital planning system during the Bill’s development.
You can read more about this story on the CIfA website: here.
The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology (SLHA) is running an industrial archaeology conference on ‘Lincoln’s Engineering History’ on the 18 November at Lincoln College, Lincoln. A series of talks will celebrate Lincoln’s remarkable engineering history – and its 100-year-old Engineering Society.
The programme includes talks on: ‘Commemorating Lincoln Engineering Society’s Centenary: It’s Origins and Early Years’; ‘Lincoln Engineering – Why and How? Factors leading to the start of engineering in the City of Lincoln’; and ‘ The Engineering Heritage of Lincoln’. Tickets cost £30 for the public and £25 for SLHA members, and the day includes lunch and refreshments.
SLHA promotes an interest in all aspects of Lincolnshire’s heritage. Details about the society can be found here: https://www.slha.org.uk/index.php
13 tops of cast-iron beam in motion, Claymills Pumping Station, October 2023. Image courtesy of Catherine Nevell.
On Saturday 28th October 2023 I was privileged to be invited to help celebrate 30 years of conservation at Claymills Pumping Station. Claymills is a Victorian pumping station on the northern side of Burton-upon-Trent designed to pump effluent from the brewery industry in the town. Burton was the largest brewing centre in Victorian Britain, and the brewing processes generated a huge quantity of foul smelling, high temperature, sulphate rich effluent which also contained a lot of suspended matter. This was all discharged into local brooks and streams around the town. These became open sewers, until eventually the crude sewage ran into the River Trent at an outfall at Wallsitch. Claymills was was designed to pump this brewery effluent to a the sewage farm at nearby Egginton, built in the 1866.
The IHSO, Mike Nevell (centre with blue scarf), attempting the help start of the beam engines. Image courtesy of Catherine Nevell.
Claymills Pumping Station was built in the period 1884-86 to designs by James Mansergh, consulting engineer to Burton-upon-Trent Municipal Borough Council, with George Hodges of Burton-upon-Trent as the main contractor. It became operational in 1886, and continued to pump the sewage up to the farm until 1969, when the current treatment works was commissioned. The beam engines were then used to pump sludge to the farm until electric pumps were installed in 1971. Abandoned, but with all its machinery intact, by the the mid-1980s the site faced demolition. However, it was listed as a grade II* building in 1986 due to the completeness of the buildings and the machinery on the site. Thereafter, interest in saving the complex grew and in September 1993 The Claymills Pumping Engines Trust was formed. This has been entirely volunteer-run since its foundation.
The main pumping plant consists of four Woolf compound, rotative, bean pumping engines. These are arranged in mirror image pairs, in two separate engine houses, with a central boiler house (containing five Lancashire boilers) and chimney. The engines were built in 1885 by Gimson & Co of Leicester and represent the final technical development of the beam engine. All the engines are similar and typically have a high-pressure cylinder with a 24-inch bore by 6-foot stroke, and the low-pressure cylinder is 38-inch bore by 8-foot stroke. Steam is distributed by means of double beat ‘Cornish’ valves, mounted in upper and lower valve chests. The cylinders act on one end of the beam, via a parallel motion. The beams, which are rivetted together and hollow to reduce weight, are 26 feet 4 inches between end centres, 4 feet deep at the centre, and each weigh around 13 and are carried on 12-inch-diameter (300 mm) bearings.
The Trust has spent its first 30 years restoring the workshop, engine houses, chimney, boilers, and steam engines. 2023 marks the return to work of all four original beam engines. Thus, the highlight of the celebrations was the running of these four beam engines, steaming all at the same time. This included the recently restored engine A, which I got to help to start! The steam and heat in the engines houses were not surprising, but the quietness of the engine movements was a surprise, the beams whispering as they rose and fell as a rapid rate.
Although the site is now fully functioning the Trust have further plans to expanded their operations and to develop their visitor and learning facilities.
Applications are now open for AIM’s next round of Connected Communities funding, from which several industrial heritage sites have already benefitted. Grants of £15,000 – £100,000 are available to museums delivering projects in the eligible areas that will improve community connections through high-quality volunteering opportunities and/or reducing loneliness and increasing social bonds. Expressions of Interest must be made by Monday 27 November.
Over the last few years nearly £3 million has been distributed on behalf of the Government by Arts Council England via partners Libraries Connected, Creative Lives and AIM, through the AIM Connected Communities programme. This has created more than 1,000 volunteering opportunities and support more than 4,000 people experiencing, or at risk of, chronic loneliness.
Who can apply? Museums and partnerships or consortia including a museum in one of the 27 eligible areas in England. Organisations do not need to be members of AIM to apply. The scheme is also open to Accredited and non-Accredited museums. Eligible areas include several industrial connurbations, such as Barnsley, Barrow-in-Furness, Burnley, Doncaster, Kingston-upon-Hull, Middlesborough, Rochdale, Sandwell, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Tameside, Wakefield and Wolverhampton.
The Old Silk Mill, Derby, in 2014 before conversion to the Museum of Making
Flooding as a result of Storm Babet has caused significant damaged to the Museum of Making in Derby, housed in the former Old Silk Mill. The Grade II Listed pioneering mill includes remains from the original water-powered silk mill built in 1717-21 by Thomas and John Lombe. The current form of the building dates from a major rebuild in 1910 after a fire destroyed much of the early 18th century building, with additional elements added in the recent conversion to the Museum of Making.
The mill building was designed to withstand some flooding and the recently refurbished museum increased this resilience. However, the water levels in October 2023 reached far higher than predicted during the redesign of the museum structure. The museum’s staff worked tirelessly to move as much as possible off the ground floor before the flood hit, but the damage appears to be substantial. As a charity, Derby Museums relies heavily on donations and earned income through events and catering, which is currently affected by the flooding and its aftermath.
Derby Museums have said that they will be doing a full assessment of the damage as soon as the water has receded and it is safe to enter the building. However, they note that their museums are already in a precarious financial position. As a result, they have launched a public appeal to help raise funds for the restoration and repair of the Museum of Making.
Donations, big or small, can be made through the Derby Museums website here: Derby Museums Donation Page – please select ‘Museum of Making’ as the reason for your gift.
Flooding around the Museum of the Making, October 2023. Image Courtesy of Derby Museums.
AIM’s latest Spark! programme is aimed at supporting trustees of volunteer-run museums to strengthen shared problem solving and build networks of support. If your trustees and Board want to improve their governance and operational activities, then this is the programme for you. Specifically, it aims to strengthen shared problem solving, building networks of support, and working together, through a series of online workshops, action learning sets and individual coaching sessions.
Participants will work through a series of online workshops, action learning sets and individual coaching sessions. This programme is designed for Trustees of volunteer-run museums, though those from museums with a small number of paid staff will also be considered. It is being developed for trustees who have spent some time in role, as opposed to new Trustees who should consider the AIM Trustee Induction workshop.
For more information on this new programme or to make an application, contact Margaret Harrison, AIM Head of Programmes on margaret@aim-museums.co.uk with the following information:
Your name, role, and organisation
The number of Trustees on your Board
What you hope to get out of the programme with regard to your own and the Board’s governance effectiveness
Describe your Board’s working relationship with your Director
Outline your organisation’s key governance challenge over the last twelve months
The ‘Places of Science’ grant scheme, run by the Royal Society, is now open for applications. Applications will close at 12pm on Friday 17 November 2023. The scheme provides grants of up to £3,500 to small museums, funding projects that tell the stories of science and scientists relevant to communities across the UK.
Through the ‘Places of Science’ grant scheme in 2022, 36 small museums across the United Kingdom have received up to £3,500 to run projects that tell stories of science to their local community. This included Industrial Heritage Network members Coldharbour Mill, Head of Steam in Darlington, and the Brunel Museum, as well as the Moira Furnace. The Royal Society is particularly interested in projects that:
explore the experiences of historically underrepresented people
are led by organisations that don’t normally feature scientific content
involve partners that can enhance the project’s outcomes, impact or quality
reach audiences who do not normally engage with science
enable possibilities for digital engagement, either as a main feature or as part of a contingency plan
Guidance on Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) has been published by several organisations in the last month. The most relevant to Industrial Heritage Network members at the moment is that provided by the 20th Century Society.
AAC is the acronym for “autoclave aerated concrete”, first developed in the 1920s, RAAC, is AAC with added steel reinforcement-hence the “R” at the front. AAC is a special form of pre-cast concrete, that is concrete made in a factory, rather than cast on site. By aerating the mix to provide a bubbly structure, which has been accurately compared to an Aero chocolate bar, the overall weight of the concrete is hugely reduced. The aeration is caused by a chemical reaction initiated when water is added to the mix. Poor initial construction and a lack of maintenance appear to be the main problems, at the moment, leading to the potential collapse of structures using such concrete.
Since most Industrial Heritage sites preserved and open to the public in England pre-date the widespread use of this type of concrete (1920s to 1990s) its unlikely to be found in many industrial structures on display or in use. However, buildings added to industrial heritages as part of their conversion to visitor attractions in the later 20th century (such as interpretation centres or stores) might be affected.
Industrial Heritage Networks 