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Consett, County Durham, England, is the administrative capital of the district of Derwentside.
In 1841, it didn't exist, bar a few isolated houses, but in the ensuing years it quickly became a boom town, ideally placed to take advantage of local sources of good quality coking coal, iron ore and limestone. The three core ingredients needed to produce iron and later on, steel.
Going further back, the area around Consett already had a strong affinity with iron manufacture, with the development of the steel industry in the Derwent Valley at Shotley Bridge, begun by immigrant German cutlers and sword-makers from Solingen during the seventeenth century. This is actually the origin of the well-known brand of today, "Wilkinson Sword".
Unfortunately, in the early 1980s, the steelworks and local coal mines all closed, and the effect on the town was catastrophic. At one point, it was said that the local YMCA was the town's biggest employer.
Attempts were made to regenerate the town, including royal visits by dignitaries such as Charles, Prince of Wales and Princess Anne, but without much success. Consett also suffered its own mini "brain drain" in the 80s and 90s as many of its best and brightest young people that might have taken positions in key local industries moved away in search of work. They finally struck it lucky when North Eastern Commuters, pushed out of the likes of Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland by rising house prices identified Consett as being very cheap and roughly in the middle and thus the town is now expanding and surrounded by new housing estates. A house price boom has seen prices rise roughly fivefold since 1997.
Sadly, a decision in the 1980s to demolish the railway line to Chester-le-Street and Newcastle leaves the daily commute as a tragically congested traffic journey with no alternative travel options, and the site of the railway station is now part of a ring road around the town. You can see what it used to look like with this piece on Consett
Railway Station.
Little has been done to preserve the Victorian history of the town, and the demolition of the imposing Steelworks Offices in the 1980s has been followed up with the demolition of the red brick Technical College, a half-sizing of the Victorian town centre park, the loss of Sherburn Park, and finally loss of the market square. All to new housing and commericial developments. Ironically, many of these open spaces were donated to the town by the steekworks.
While all of those times are now lost to many residents of the town and are impossible to imagine, Consett Iron Works in 1893 is a new book by a local historian that revisits those glory days when Consett geuinely led the rest of the world in Steel and Iron Manufacture, delivering steel rails for the new railways to all four corners of the globe, and manufacturing the steel plates used by the shipyards at Sunderland and Newcastle to build the warships for what was then also the finest Navy in the word.
Based upon a genuine 1893 book about the steelworks in its Victorian heyday, it also contains no less than 24 full page images, including the imposing and architecturally important Company Offices, sadly demolished in the 1980s. It is an unmissable book for local historians or those interested in the industrial revolution.
It has been produced by an ex-resident of the town, whose parents, grandparents and generations before that were all involved with the coal mining and steelworks industry in the area. He remembers what it was like then and has always had a great interest in the local history.
If you wish to buy Consett Iron Works in 1893
, and fancy obtaining
any of the images as framed wall prints, such as the above, contact me and I can make them available in a variety of sizes, either framed or unframed.
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