Mark Chalmers

Two things characterise Scottish industry in the 21st century: the richness of its heritage, and the dismaying speed with which parts have been wound down.  This process, often called de-industrialisation, has become a recurrent theme, devastating coal and steel, shipbuilding, truck manufacture and even food production.  It has touched every aspect of Scottish life, from our politics, economy, architecture, to our literature – Archie Hind’s “Dear Green Place” features the relict industrial landscape around Clydebridge, and Jeff Torrington’s “The Devil’s Carousel” describes the demise of the Rootes factory at Linwood.  Each slash of destruction cuts deeply into our identity, and our sense of ourselves.  It also harms the 250 year heritage of industrial buildings which those industries built around them.

Heavy industries from the first wave of the Industrial Revolution were also the first to be devastated.  Deep coal mining ended in this country several years ago, and all traces of the last of the fireclay companies disappeared before that.  Yet Scotland had some of the largest and most modern pits in Europe, such as Seafield and Longannet; and companies like Glenboig Union Fireclay and Stein Refractories were world-leading enterprises in the 20th century.  Almost all traces of them have disappeared, as if their legacy was deliberately erased: but that means the legacy their architecture has also been thrown away.  The dramatic concrete winding towers designed by Egon Riss for the National Coal Board have virtually all gone.  Giant northlight sheds which once held dozens of tunnel kilns have been levelled.  Other industries have been similarly affected.  Their loss hits Scotland on every level, and that makes the case for a Scottish industrial museum all the more compelling.

That museum’s role should be to save not only ephemera from these moribund companies (things such as ledgers, letterheads and catalogues which sit easily on the shelves of archives) but also a representative selection of the machinery they used, which is more difficult to accommodate; and also the buildings which housed them, without which it’s almost impossible to appreciate their context.  Properly conserving our industrial heritage means looking after them all.  In some cases that means retaining buildings intact, in others campaigning to have them listed, or sensitively converted to another use.  At the very least, it means photographing the factory, mill or works both inside and out before it is altered or destroyed.  The rate of change today means that the window of opportunity is often brief.

RCAHMS has already recorded a range of industrial premises, but these buildings make up a small part of Scotland’s industrial heritage, and the need to conserve extends far beyond them.  Our industrial patrimony includes some unique buildings, from the ground-breaking North British Diesel Works at Whiteinch, one of the very first Modern Movement buildings – to Paton’s Mill in Johnstone, claimed to be the world’s first machine factory.  Whilst historic complexes like New Lanark and Stanley Mills have been saved for posterity, Paton’s Mill wasn’t so fortunate.  After closure, it was allowed to decay irretrievably – and that neglect emphasises how important the work of recording is.

Of course, some sectors of Scotland’s industrial sector have succeeded, and ironically an ongoing record of their achievements is also necessary, because success means unremitting change and development.  As much can be lost in a restructuring as a closure, and architecture is often the first thing to disappear, as in the re-construction of shipyards and papermills in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  For example, BAE Systems’ two shipyards at Govan and Yarrows are still in business, but building ships in radically different ways to their predecessors 50 years ago.  That means the old fabrication halls and sail lofts have gone, replaced by covered building bays which are simple, steel-clad sheds.    Similarly, at the Carrongrove papermill at Denny, modern machine houses were constructed over the ruins of the old – although both ancient and modern alike have now been demolished.

So industrial preservation has to cover the spectrum, trying to preserve a disparate range of activities housed in a diverse cross-section of architecture.  From the triple-expansion steam engines pioneered by firms like David Rowan, to the armaments of William Beardmores; from Alfred Nobel’s huge dynamite factory in Ayrshire, to the electric motors built by Bruce Peebles of Edinburgh, or Barr & Stroud’s precision optics: each one generated its own peculiar and unique buildings.  Sometimes they are monumental stone-built workshops from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, sometimes strange metal-buttressed hills as at Ardeer, where Nobel perfected his explosives.  Even though the architectures are radically different, the aims of industrial preservation are the same.

Accordingly, we need to rescue things which would otherwise be destroyed; to preserve unique and important aspects from each industry; to conserve artefacts where they have begun to decay; to interpret those relics so that their purpose is clear; and to spread knowledge about the importance of preservation.  The “bricks-and-mortar” museum is important, since it provides a container for what has been saved already, and a springboard for the work of saving what remains.

Hopefully this piece explains some of the motives behind previous blog articles, and will help make sense of the things which follow…