This place has a industrial past. Steel, coal, timber flowed in and out of what was one of the busiest ports in the country. Local people proudly identified themselves as being dockers, steel workers, carpenters and alike, not a namby pamby artist in sight then. This was a badge passed down the generations, families would be referred to by both name and trade, thus the Williams were Dockers. A more certain but immobile world, come your fourteenth birthday you knew you would end up with your old man in the yards. Much of that has gone. I want to understand the dynamics of this, how this industrial machine worked, how it all connected up. I am looking a town map dated 1938. It all starts with the river, two large deep wet docks spur off the river, there are numerous dry docks (for ship maintenance). Quayside Cranes load/unload the boats. Serving each crane is a dedicated rail line, these rail lines radiate out covering the whole of the town. This network is much more extensive than what remains today, most of it has been torn up but the odd rusty section remains as a reminder of that past. Many of the incoming products are being processed locally, the local factories are directly fed by the extended rail system. The rail lines flow directly into the factories themselves. This connectivity and method of distribution is different to the road based one of today.
The homes of the workers are local to their place of work, you didn’t have far to travel to get to work then. Looking at this map, I am reminded of muscle, ligature, connective tissue, it has a organic alive look to it. Considering the time of this map (1938) that seems apt, within two years, with the outbreak of war that muscle would flex.
