Then And Now In Stoke on Trent
By Paul Homewood
A Factory scape in the Potteries’, (1938)
A couple of weeks ago, I ran a post on Clean Air Day, which featured the above photo of what Britain used to look like when air pollution really was bad.
One reader, Kevin O’Sullivan, has managed to locate that image in Stoke on Trent and has compared it to what the area looks like today. I’ll let him tell the story:
A couple of weeks ago, Paul Homewood posted another brilliant observation via his NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT website, relating to the absurd notion that we are now suffering from crippling air pollution….along with the usual global warming; famine; pestilence; droughts; floods; plagues of Locusts etc, etc.
An image accompanying Paul’s "Clean Air Day" blog was of a Factory Scape ( Fig1), showing what real air pollution was like in the Potteries back in 1938.
Anyway: as I had some spare time over the weekend, I thought I would have a try at discovering the actual location of where that photo was taken, and see what changes, if any, have occurred during the intervening years. I live in the South East and didn’t fancy a long trip up north on a whim, so I used Google Street View and a few old online maps to get my bearings. One great help in establishing the location was seeing the corner of what looked like a football stand in the bottom RH corner. I was then able to establish that the building was in fact the original Stoke City football ground, named Victoria after a nearby pub’.
I found another photo of the Potteries taken in the 1950’s (Fig 2), showing the faint outline of a church through the pollution, which I was able to identify as St James’ church Stoke. From that information, and using more old maps, I deduced where the original photo had been taken.
You can see the then and now images below.
Many thanks to Kevin for his work.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Vivid and compelling. There must be lots of CO2. Vegetation in East Anglia seems more luxuriant than usual. It would be nice to source for that . Similarly for the constitents of ‘ fresh air’ from month to month. Simple authoratative facts with trends from respected sources frequently reported without over elaboration will be the way to challenge the neurotics and opportunistic profiteers. They have so much to lose so it will be a long campaign.
Thanks for posting this.
“Vegetation in East Anglia seems more luxuriant than usual”
The b****y weeds are doing particularly well…
The pollution photo was taken in 1938. That was the peak year for the early 20th century temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. It shows up clearly in the 1975 NAS Report “Understanding Climate Change”… Figure A.6. 1938 was also the year that a hurricane as strong as “Super Sandy” devastated the same New York area. After 1938 the global temperatures dropped until 1975. Man-made CO2 began to rise after all that, not before.
Ah but…….. it’s just as deadly nowadays – the experts say so! You might not see 450 deaths in a single smog, but the models say they’re there.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/chimney-world-smog-manchester-through-6909542
Reminds me of the StarTrek episode with the computer simulated war. Perhaps the air quality modelers should decide who should report to the disintegration chamber?
Apparently the smoke pollution used to be revered as a symbol that a city was thriving, as wrong-headed as the people viewing mountains full of wind turbines as beautiful today.
Yep lived there , when all those kilns started after a holiday you could not see across the road in Etruria .
Back at the end of the 1980s I was a researcher at the Pollution Research Unit in Manchester University. I remember looking at all the data on measured air pollutants from many, many measuring stations across Manchester and Salford and the story of decline in all the measured air pollutants was absolutely clear from the late 1950s onwards. The data that is now available nationally for the period 1970 onwards (that were shown in an article a day or so back on this same blog) show this decline has continued now until the present day. I also did some work about 1980 looking at how sunshine levels in winter in Manchester doubled from the late 1950s to 1980 as smoke and sulphur dioxide levels fell. The other point is how black were the buildings. If you go to King Street in Manchester now there is an office block built about 1970 for the then National Westminster bank. In order to ‘fit in’ with the colour of all the other buildings in the street at that time the concrete was coloured dark grey. By the 1980s all the other old buildings in the street were stone cleaned and now the newer, concrete building stands out as the one grey/black building in the street. I can also remember my father telling me of an occasion at midday in Salford in the 1950s in May, I think, when the smoke and fog were so thick that he needed a touch to read the bus timetable on the bus stop. …. oh, yes, the air is ‘so’ dirty now…. sarc/
There’s an interesting history of air pollution on the Museum of Science and Industry website:
http://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/our-environment/air-pollution
I think the ultimate example of a building blackened by pollution in the UK is 10 Downing Street. It appears to be built from black bricks, but it was discovered they were actually yellow bricks during restoration work that was carried out in the early 1960s. Changing from a black facade to yellow was regarded as too drastic a change in appearance for the building, and so the cleaned yellow bricks have been painted black ever since.
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street
“Restoration and modernisation
By the 1950s, the material state of 10 Downing Street had reached crisis point. Bomb damage had worsened existing structural problems: the building was suffering from subsidence, sloping walls, twisting door frames and an enormous annual repair bill.
The Ministry of Works carried out a survey in 1954 into the state of the structure. The report bounced from Winston Churchill (1951 to 1955) to Anthony Eden (1955 to 1957) to Harold Macmillan (1957 to 1963) as one Prime Minister followed the other. Finally, a committee set up by Macmillan concluded that drastic action was required before the building fell or burnt down.
The committee put forward a range of options, including the complete demolition of Number 10, 11 and 12 and their replacement with a new building. That idea was rejected and it was decided that Number 12 should be rebuilt, and Numbers 10 and 11 should be strengthened and their historic features preserved.
The architect Raymond Erith was selected to supervise the work, which was expected to take 2 years and cost £500,000. It ended up taking a year longer than planned and costing double the original estimate. The foundations proved to be so rotten that concrete underpinning was required on a massive scale.
Number 10 was completely gutted. Walls, floors and even the columns in the Cabinet Room and Pillared Room proved to be rotten and had to be replaced. New features were added too, including a room facing onto Downing Street and a veranda at Number 11 for the Chancellor.
It was also discovered that the familiar exterior façade was not black at all, but yellow. The blackened colour was a product of two centuries of severe pollution. To keep the familiar appearance, the newly cleaned yellow bricks were painted black to match their previous colour. Erith’s work was completed in 1963, but not long afterwards, dry rot became apparent and further repairs had to be undertaken.”
of course the air quality in this country is better that it was 80 years ago.. We don’t have any industry anymore . It’s all been outsourced to china.
Yes, after we perfected industry with scrubbed clean emissions we off-shored it all to countries that don’t bother. Green genius.
I grew up in middlesbrough in the 40s amd 50s,we used to say we woke up each morning to the sound of sorrows coughing.i later worked in Cargo Fleet and Haverton Hill ( voted dirtiest place in England several years)
When walking in the nearby hills, the views over town were of a huge brown cloud, shading to a brighter yellow over the ICI plant at Billingham.
The last real smog I experienced was in Manchester in 1963/4, when I had to more-or-less feel my way from the city centre to take my girlfriend home to Salford. Normally, this took 7-8 minutes. That night, it took over an hour, and I was wishing for a long white stick to find the curb. Visibility was about 3 feet! Reminds me of the poetry: “I shot an arrow in the air – it stuck!”
Not sure how to pass on a clip – so have used these comments(?)
The Economist – of course! – links the Miami Champlain Towers tragedy to Climate Change..
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/28/did-climate-change-undermine-champlain-towers-south
A ROOF OVERBURDENED with construction equipment, poor waterproofing, faulty construction: if reasons such as these are behind the catastrophic collapse on June 24th of a condominium building in Florida, they will be fairly straightforward to learn from and to fix in other buildings. Far more worrying is another theory, that the cause may be a failure to adapt to climate change.
With ten people reported dead, rescue crews are still searching for survivors within the rubble of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, a suburb of Miami. One hundred and fifty-one remain missing. The disaster, which destroyed 55 of 136 apartments, may turn out to be the deadliest building collapse in America for 20 years.
It is too soon to know what caused it. But one theory is that over the years the ground shifted beneath the building. Shimon Wdowinski, a researcher at Florida International University, published a paper in 2020 in which he used satellite data to chart subsidence of the land on which Champlain Towers stood. From 1993 to 1999, he reported, the ground beneath the building sank at a rate of nearly two millimetres a year. Although these data have prompted many to extrapolate the threat to nearby developments, Dr Wdowinski cautions against that. He stresses that his data were more than 20 years old and covered only a tightly localised area.
At the same time as the land is sinking, the water is rising. Sea levels around Miami rise at an average of nine millimetres a year—nearly triple the global average—and tidal flooding is regular and severe. The presence of more salt water in or near the foundations, whether in the form of flowing liquid or tiny particles carried in moist sea air, can cause severe structural damage. If chloride ions permeate concrete blocks and reach the reinforcing steel bars within them, the metal will rust. The bars then expand, both compromising their ability to withstand stresses and causing the surrounding concrete to flake off and crack—a process known as spalling.
“When one’s designing a concrete structure in a maritime environment, it’s normally taken that corrosion of reinforcing steel will be the life-governing mechanism of the structure,” says Nick Buenfeld, a structural engineer at Imperial College, London. In a report in 2018 on the Champlain Towers complex, released after the disaster by Surfside officials, an external engineering firm found abundant signs of concrete spalling, though not enough to suggest an imminent collapse was likely.
Though the wet, salty conditions in Surfside make stable construction more challenging, many experts believe such conditions are not the only reason for last week’s disaster. Being in a coastal area is not in itself a recipe for collapse. “Of course you are subjected to the salt water. But that’s just one factor,” says Atorod Azizinamini, a civil engineer at Florida International University.
That said, changing climatic conditions mean that ever more buildings will be exposed to stresses they were not designed to withstand. A report issued in 2019 by Britain’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers, in collaboration with the Florida-based Rising Seas Institute, warned that the world’s infrastructure is poorly prepared for rising sea levels. These are likely to lead not only to more corrosion, but to higher risks of flooding, disruption of vital services, and increased pressure on structural supports. With that rise predicted to be as much as three metres by 2100, more regular assessments and potential retrofits should be a priority.
Depending on the outcome of the investigations, the collapse of Champlain Towers South could illustrate just why such changes are urgently needed. The complex was covered by local building regulations requiring that such structures be given thorough inspections 40 years after construction. Champlain Towers opened its doors in 1981.
If you watch Massive Engineering Mistakes on Quest (on catch up via Discovery + but you will have to pay which I think is a bit off for something you could have watched for free unless they cut out the adverts) you will learn that Florida has problems with limestone and sink holes which may or may not have anything to do with the Miami collapse.
But if you watch other episodes you will see all manner of mistakes made during construction of buildings none of which could be attributed to climate change.
Hi
Of course….
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/28/did-climate-change-undermine-champlain-towers-south
Cheers – and thanks for your work
Peter
A ROOF OVERBURDENED with construction equipment, poor waterproofing, faulty construction: if reasons such as these are behind the catastrophic collapse on June 24th of a condominium building in Florida, they will be fairly straightforward to learn from and to fix in other buildings. Far more worrying is another theory, that the cause may be a failure to adapt to climate change.
With ten people reported dead, rescue crews are still searching for survivors within the rubble of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, a suburb of Miami. One hundred and fifty-one remain missing. The disaster, which destroyed 55 of 136 apartments, may turn out to be the deadliest building collapse in America for 20 years.
It is too soon to know what caused it. But one theory is that over the years the ground shifted beneath the building. Shimon Wdowinski, a researcher at Florida International University, published a paper in 2020 in which he used satellite data to chart subsidence of the land on which Champlain Towers stood. From 1993 to 1999, he reported, the ground beneath the building sank at a rate of nearly two millimetres a year. Although these data have prompted many to extrapolate the threat to nearby developments, Dr Wdowinski cautions against that. He stresses that his data were more than 20 years old and covered only a tightly localised area.
At the same time as the land is sinking, the water is rising. Sea levels around Miami rise at an average of nine millimetres a year—nearly triple the global average—and tidal flooding is regular and severe. The presence of more salt water in or near the foundations, whether in the form of flowing liquid or tiny particles carried in moist sea air, can cause severe structural damage. If chloride ions permeate concrete blocks and reach the reinforcing steel bars within them, the metal will rust. The bars then expand, both compromising their ability to withstand stresses and causing the surrounding concrete to flake off and crack—a process known as spalling.
“When one’s designing a concrete structure in a maritime environment, it’s normally taken that corrosion of reinforcing steel will be the life-governing mechanism of the structure,” says Nick Buenfeld, a structural engineer at Imperial College, London. In a report in 2018 on the Champlain Towers complex, released after the disaster by Surfside officials, an external engineering firm found abundant signs of concrete spalling, though not enough to suggest an imminent collapse was likely.
Though the wet, salty conditions in Surfside make stable construction more challenging, many experts believe such conditions are not the only reason for last week’s disaster. Being in a coastal area is not in itself a recipe for collapse. “Of course you are subjected to the salt water. But that’s just one factor,” says Atorod Azizinamini, a civil engineer at Florida International University.
That said, changing climatic conditions mean that ever more buildings will be exposed to stresses they were not designed to withstand. A report issued in 2019 by Britain’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers, in collaboration with the Florida-based Rising Seas Institute, warned that the world’s infrastructure is poorly prepared for rising sea levels. These are likely to lead not only to more corrosion, but to higher risks of flooding, disruption of vital services, and increased pressure on structural supports. With that rise predicted to be as much as three metres by 2100, more regular assessments and potential retrofits should be a priority.
Depending on the outcome of the investigations, the collapse of Champlain Towers South could illustrate just why such changes are urgently needed. The complex was covered by local building regulations requiring that such structures be given thorough inspections 40 years after construction. Champlain Towers opened its doors in 1981.
Oh come on, those images surely have been photoshopped to make the early one misty in the same way as the Himalayas photos recently from the BBC.
I was brought up in Birmingham in the 50’s and 60’s in an up market area. I remember going to school in smog so dense you couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead. We had to literally feel our way to the bus stop. The smog had a very characteristic smell, and was yellowish. I often wonder what the inside of my lungs is like. My father was a GP, he used to suggest his patients with lung disease move to Weston Super Mare. Some did and improved enormously.
Born near Manchester in 1951, I have a vivid memory of us driving back out of Manchester one winter’s night in dense choking smog. Old man had to walk on the pavement to guide my mum at some points. The only downside of the Clean Air Act is that it removed so much sulphur from the atmosphere that black spot became a major problem for rose growers.
In the run up to COP26 money is being spent. A glass sculpture has been created with air from 1765 trapped inside apparently.
Rather than celebrate the inventions of James Watt and his refined steam engine the date is used to focus on 280ppm C02 back then compared with 419 ppm C02 in May 2021.
Nothing to do with sulphur, for example.
Just the chosen ones’ narrative.
How will delegates travel to Glasgow it would be interesting to know?
I hope they do not use any form of fossil fuel or else they lie.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/19405743.cop26-antartic-air-sculpture-exhibited-glasgow-climate-change-conference/
I visited the Middleport Pottery in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, a couple of weeks ago. Much was said about the pollution in the past. Life expectancy was about 40. Monday was wash day, as this was when the kilns were cleaned out. Also, most people lived close to where they worked. Thankfully, the air is much cleaner now. The downside is, it wasn’t so much the competition from overseas that affected the potteries, but the introduction of the clean air act. Middleport now has 1 working kiln, instead of the 7 that used to be here.
Yes, air is much cleaner now, except for one thing, wood burning, which causes particle pollution. This can be a serious problem for the 5.4 million asthma sufferers in the UK, 1 million of whom are considered to be ‘difficult’ or ‘severe’ cases.
I know of 3 people who have died from eye cancer due to wood particles. The cancer travels along the optical nerve to the brain. Not a very pleasant way to die.
There is still much to be done about this problem.