At the time of writing — March 2022 — most of the world is emerging from two years of serious disruption due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In the early months of this, the Editors of Industrial Archaeology Review saw an increase in the submission of potential articles for consideration, as authors found time during lockdown to complete work that had been languishing for a while. After that, however, the flow of material for publication has slowed significantly, as restrictions on access to sites, museums and libraries has stalled many archaeological projects. The Editors therefore express their admiration and thanks to the authors whose work is presented here, in bringing their work to completion in difficult times. Similar problems have often affected the work of peer reviewers, whose vital role in a journal like ours must, of necessity, pass unacknowledged, but is greatly appreciated.
The five articles presented in this issue do not just reflect a great diversity in subject matter and geographical origin, but also demonstrate the range of different approaches that can be taken to understand past industrial workplaces and the lives of the people who inhabited them. We start close to home, geographically and conceptually, with the first of a two-part contribution from Roger Holden about the Linotype Company’s works in Altrincham, north-west England. The factory was built in the 1890s, designed by Stott & Sons who are better known as the architects of many of the region’s cotton mills. The technology of the printing machinery made in this works had been pioneered in the United States, and many of the machine tools employed were also imported from the US, as they were found to be superior to their British equivalents. Most significantly, this factory was one of the first in the UK to drive its machinery using electricity, generated by steam engines in the factory’s power house, rather than transmitting mechanical power around the site. The Linotype Works therefore illustrates industries in transition in several different ways. The second part of Roger’s contribution, scheduled to appear in issue 44.2 of this journal, will focus on the distinctive housing estate that the Linotype Company built to accommodate its workers. The Broadheath area, where the Linotype Works and its housing are located, is considered to be one of the first industrial estates in Britain.
Issue 43.1 of this journal included a fascinating article about the transformation of the small coastal town of Rijeka, Croatia, into an important industrial centre during the 18th and early 19th centuries.Footnote1 The industrial buildings erected during that period relied heavily on massive stone or brick walls with internal timber structures, amalgamating local vernacular traditions with ideas copied from other countries where the process of industrialisation was more advanced. In this issue, the same authors, Adriana Bjelanović and Nana Palinić, joined by Marko Franković, describe the evolution of Rijeka’s industrial buildings through the 19th century. Cast- and wrought-iron components, imported or produced locally, replaced timber and facilitated the creation of larger and more flexible production spaces. However, many aspects of the structural design continued to follow local vernacular traditions.
Swalwell Ironworks near Gateshead, north-east England, was an important integrated site of iron and steel manufacture, founded in the early 18th century. It included blast furnaces, a foundry, slitting mill, forge and crucible steel furnaces and continued in use for this purpose until the end of the 19th century. The results of archaeological investigation of some of the site in 2005 were described in a previous article in this journal.Footnote2 Plans to redevelop a neighbouring site to the west enabled further archaeological work to be conducted in 2016. Rupert Lotherington’s article presents the key finding of this project, including the remains of part of the original early 18th-century Grand Warehouse, anchor shop and workshops, along with a mid-19th-century crucible furnace. Further parts of this complex are assumed to survive in areas beyond the current extent of redevelopment.
Another example of new technology crossing the Atlantic underpins a contribution from Kenneth Jackson and Behnam Pourdeyhimi on the introduction of the automatic loom into the British cotton industry. In the middle of the 19th century, the development of power looms facilitated a step change in the manufacture of, firstly, cotton and then other types of fabric. The original types of power looms had been largely replaced by automatic looms in the United States by the 1930s, but these were slow to be adopted in Britain. This article examines the technical, organisational and economic factors that contributed to this important failure to adapt to new technology.
The final article in this issue focuses on Hopewell Furnace, a well-known late 18th-century charcoal-fuelled blast furnace site in Pennsylvania, USA. As befits their status as part of a National Historic Site, the extensive physical remains have been well documented already. However, in his article here, Brian Schmult uses a novel approach to shed light on the lives of some of its workforce. The work involved in cleaning the castings produced in ironworks such as this is often overlooked, but Brian matches surviving examples of the stoves and other items that were the staple products of the works to historical records, to show how this part of the manufacturing process was organised and paid for.
Notes
1 Nana Palinić and Adriana Bjelanović, ‘Structures of the Proto-industrial and Early Industrial Age in Rijeka, Croatia’, Industrial Archaeology Review 43, no. 1 (2021): 2–19. doi:10.1080/03090728.2021.1892327
2 Jennifer Proctor, David Cranstone, Roderick Mackenzie and John Nolan, ‘Archaeological Investigations at Swalwell Ironworks, Tyne and Wear’, Industrial Archaeology Review 33, no. 1 (2011): 18–39. doi:10.1179/174581911X13070247656462