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 Jonathan Warren

INDUSTRIAL
//////////

TEESSIDE
//////////

LIVES
//////////

AND
//////////

LEGACIES
A Post-Industrial
Geography
Industrial Teesside, Lives and Legacies
 Jonathan Warren

Industrial Teesside,
Lives and Legacies
A post-industrial geography
Jonathan Warren
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-64539-1    ISBN 978-3-319-64540-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64540-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950863

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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Cover credit: Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge © Michele Allan

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For Susan and James
 Foreword

This is an important book that deals with something of enormous con-

temporary social and political significance—the cultural consequences of
de-industrialisation as these are experienced and understood by people
living in a place that was literally and exactly created by the industrial
revolution. Much of industrial Teesside sprang from the ground in the
nineteenth century and became a place to which people flocked for work
in a new world system. Jon Warren notes that it was a zone of mass immi-
gration. Richard Webber (2004) showed that much of this was from one
of Europe’s poorest peasant peripheries—the congested districts of the
West of Ireland. I am mostly a descendant of that immigration, although
like many of the ‘White’ people of the North East of England I am a
mongrel of mixed ancestry. The point of that historical diversion is that
the transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial society, a trans-
formation that has happened in my own adult lifetime, is in cultural
terms a transformation on the scale of that experienced by my great
grandfather when he moved from the Ox Mountains in County Sligo to
be first a navvy and then a coal miner in County Durham. Jon Warren
has seized, absolutely rightly, on the profound insight of C. Wright Mills
that the proper focus of Sociology as a discipline is on the intersection of
biography and history but as a sociologist working in geography he has
extended the notion of biography to include not just the biographies—
the life histories—of people but also the biography of the place in which
vii
viii Foreword

they live. The point is to understand life course in a place as that place
changes, we might say underneath your very feet, is constitutive of the
way you understand the world now and understand your own place in
that world.
So we have a biography of Teesside that brings together the social and
economic history of a place with both personal life histories and collec-
tive responses to how one’s own life has intersected with these changes.
And it does so at a crucial point in the history of Teesside itself and of the
industrial world for which Teesside can almost stand as an instantiation
of an ideal type. This a point of crisis—a point in time in the history/
trajectory of a system—when things cannot stay as they are. The system
must change. We find this expressed very clearly in political terms by the
people of Teesside’s overwhelming rejection of continuing membership
of the European Union in the 2016 referendum, by the election of a
Conservative Mayor albeit that the tiny turnout for that election is more
indicative than its actual result, and by the subsequent revival of the
Labour Party on the basis of that Party’s left wing leadership and mani-
festo in the 2017 general election. The political system is in crisis because
the industrial system is in crisis. Jon Warren’s book goes a long way
towards explaining why this is so.
There are many good things in this book. I will point particularly to
the serious history of both the cultural forms of the work structure of
organised capitalism—the world of ICI in particular (and for a novel that
actually took that as a form see Sid Chaplin’s Sam in the Morning (1967),
which I have always thought was set in a fictionalised ICI). It is not just
that there was an industrial culture of firms—in ICI based on high wages
and salaries and on a German concept of the form and interests of stake-
holders in the enterprise, there was also a very large and intersecting
industrial-skilled working class and middle class. The industrial middle
class is a massively neglected group in studies of the nature of the class
order but even more ignored is the way there was both a transition within
a working life from skilled working class to industrial middle class roles
and extensive familial relationships between skilled workers and the
industrial middle class, including of course marriage of skilled male
workers to women in white collar jobs. Not least of the virtues of Jon
 Foreword
   ix

Warren’s work is that women are given their proper place in the social
structure of the organised industrial world and that place was by no
means just in the home—they were a crucial part of the world of work as
well.
Jon Warren has been able to write the book he has written because of
the very careful methods and methodological programme he deployed in
the research on which it is based. He has combined documentary research,
interviews and focus-group work, with the latter based on stimulation of
discussion through the deployment of visual images—the visual matters,
although as Jon notes we can reproduce how places look but we cannot
reproduce how they sounded—and I would note in an area where the
chemical industry was so important, how they smelled. We have a record
addressed to one sense, and very useful that record is too, but not a
soundscape or a ‘smellscape’, although all three senses matter in stimulat-
ing recall and sensibility.
Taken just as a monograph in social research this would be an impor-
tant book, but it is much more than that. It deploys the conceptual
framework and the methods toolbox of the social sciences to show us
how people think about their world now and are beginning to think
about how that world might be made different. For people of my genera-
tion, the young elderly in their late 60s up to their mid-70s, who grew up
and lived through organised industrial capitalism in places like Teesside,
we are looking at a world—to use that dreadful phrase—going forward,
that will not offer our children and grandchildren the security and sense
of purpose that we had in our own lives. Jon Warren lets all the genera-
tions of Teesside speak to what that means and how their understanding
of the future is shaped by their own lived past. I hope this book is read by
Teesside’s politicians because there is nothing on offer today in this place
or in places like it that has the character and potential of the modernisation
programme, so well described by Jon Warren, of the 1960s—of the white
hot heat of the technological revolution in which if not diverted I would
have had a life course as a biochemical engineer, and that life course was
available, not just as an economic function, but as a social function,
giving real meaning and purpose to my life. Work matters, and we see
that in the accounts people offer us here. The question is what if anything
x Foreword

we can put in its place, and that is a question not just for social scientists
or even for politicians but for all of us as citizens. Jon Warren’s book tells
us where we are starting from. Now, where do we go?

Durham University Professor David Byrne

Durham, UK

References

Webber, R. (2004). Neighbourhood segregation and social mobility

among the descendants of Middlesbrough’s 19th century Celtic
Immigrants. Retrieved from http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/working_
papers/paper88.pdf
 Preface

NORTHERN TOWNS
These Northern towns
Always changing, just the same.
This one’s different, this one’s mine
I hurt when you stumble, I love when you shine.

Northern Powerhouse?
We were the first, we were the best!
Standing proud above the rest.
We led the world, we showed the way.

We made bridges, we made ships

We made iron and steel.
Our ‘Transporter’, clad anew
Grand Lady of the Tees.

This Northern town

This dusty shadow
I hurt when you stumble
I still love when you shine.
Copyright Marilyn Jordan. July 2016

xi
 Acknowledgements

It’s difficult to know quite where to start, as there have been so many
people who have helped this book make it onto the page. I would like to
begin by thanking everyone who has participated in the research over the
last 2 years while I was working at Durham, who spoke to me, answered
my questions, commented on the photographs and set me right when I
had the wrong end of the stick! I hope that I have represented your views
fairly and retold your stories accurately. Thank you for talking to me,
without you I would not have a book.
I would like to say a very special thank you to Michele Allan of Durham
University whose brilliant photographs contributed so much to the proj-
ect, especially to the visual focus groups, it was a real privilege to work
with you, and I hope to again in the future.
Additionally, I would like to thank all the organisations who helped
make the research possible by providing their facilities and expertise.
Matthew Jones and Julie Allinson at Stockton Central Library, Ruth
Hobbins and her colleagues at the Teesside Archives, Bella Adam, Giles
Maffett and Alistair Hudson at the Middlesbrough Institute for Modern
Art (MIMA), Julian Harrop from Beamish Museum, Nathan Stephens
Griffin and Lorenza Antonucci at Teesside University and the Thrive
Community group in Stockton. A big thank you too to Marilyn Jordan,
who read her poem “Northern Towns” at one of the research events and
has kindly allowed it to appear as the preface to this book.
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Joanna O’Neill at Palgrave for her patience and
support, never having written a book before her calm manner when I
rang her to ask daft questions was always really welcome and very reassur-
ing. Thank you too to the original commissioning editor Dominic Walker
for having faith in the idea and proposal, I hope I have done it justice.
This research was funded by a research leadership award from the
Leverhulme Trust (RL-2012-006), held by Professor Clare Bambra. I
would like to thank Clare for giving me the time and space to research
and write this book.
I would like to thank my friends Kate Mattheys and Kayleigh
Garthwaite for their encouragement and support whilst I have been try-
ing to write up the research. I often felt that the book would never get
done and your reassurances that it would meant a lot. Kayleigh deserves
another vote of thanks for offering comments on the draft of the text, as
does David Byrne who also wrote the foreword. Thanks are also due to
Fred Robinson of St Chad’s college for his support and advice. I must also
mention my students, friends and colleagues at Trevelyan College
Durham who encouraged me and suffered regular updates when they
asked “how is the book getting on?”
Most importantly I would like to give the biggest thanks to Susan and
James for putting up with me whilst I was trying to produce this book. I
was probably the most miserable husband and dad in the world between
November 2016 and May 2017 and would like to say sorry! Thanks for
everything, I couldn’t have made it to the end of this long journey
­without your love and support.
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Understanding Biographies of Place: Industrial Teesside  15

3 Industrial Teesside’s Biography  51

4 Exploring Teesside’s Visual Legacies  87

5 Changing Industry, Transforming Lives:

Social and Cultural Legacies 137

6 Two Teessides?—A Legacy of Inequalities 181

7 Conclusion: Place, People and the Post-Industrial 209

xv
xvi Contents

 pilogue  249
E

Index 253
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 A map of Teesside based on the 1968 County

Borough boundaries 17
Fig. 2.2 The decline of employment in steel and chemicals on
Teesside 1965–2010. Reproduced from Evenhuis (2016) 29
Fig. 4.1 Tees-Side Industrial Development Board brochure
cover 1947 93
Fig. 4.2 Workers leaving the West Gate at ICI Billingham
in the early 1950s (ICI archive) 95
Fig. 4.3 Stockton High Street in the 1950s (Valentine of
Dundee, St Andrews University) 98
Fig. 4.4 Apprentices at ICI Wilton, Training Centre Machine
Shop—1960 (ICI archive) 100
Fig. 4.5 Women working in the summarising office at
ICI Billingham (ICI archive) 103
Fig. 4.6 Launching a Bradwell boiler into the Tees—Head Wrightson,
Thornaby 1950s (Remembering Thornaby group) 105
Fig. 4.7 ICI workers doing maintenance, one in full protective
clothing the other with basic protection (ICI archive) 107
Fig. 4.8 Messenger boys at ICI Billingham 1950s (ICI archive) 109
Fig. 4.9 ICI Safety Committee meeting—1950s (ICI archive) 111
Fig. 4.10 Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge (Michele Allan 2015) 114
Fig. 4.11 Say No to the EU—The Coatham Hotel/Windsor
Ballroom Redcar seafront (Michele Allan 2016) 116

xvii
xviii List of Figures

Fig. 4.12 The National Cycling Championship Stockton High

Street—June 2016 (Jon Warren 2016) 118
Fig. 4.13 A view of Middlehaven dock Middlesbrough, from the
North bank of the Tees (Michele Allan 2015) 120
Fig. 4.14 The Village Deli—Hartburn village, Stockton
(Michele Allan 2015) 122
Fig. 4.15 Derelict housing at Limetrees Close, Port Clarence,
the Transporter Bridge in the background
(Michele Allan 2015) 124
Fig. 4.16 Redcar steelworks—July 2016 (Michele Allan 2016) 126
Fig. 4.17 Wind turbines at Redcar beach, bench in the foreground,
July 2016 (Michele Allan 2016) 128
Fig. 4.18 The Victoria Estate, Stockton-on-Tees, Summer 2015
(Michele Allan 2015) 130
Fig. 4.19 The mouth of the Tees viewed from South Gare,
July 2016 (Michele Allan 2016) 131
Fig. 4.20 A view of the Eston Hills from Warrenby—July 2016
(Michele Allan 2016) 133
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Employee jobs (2015) 18

Table 2.2 Employee jobs by industry (2015) 19

xix
 1
Introduction

When I wrote the proposal for this book in October 2015 the future of
steelmaking on Teesside looked bleak. A slump in world steel prices
meant that the steel made at the Redcar blast furnace was uncompetitive
and unwanted. Steel that had been sold at £500 per ton a year before was
now trading on the global markets at around £250 per ton. Redcar steel
cost around £400 per ton to produce so the works looked likely to close,
marking the end of steelmaking on Teesside.
However, the crisis was not just seen as a matter of economics. It was
not seen as just the closure of a business, due to hard economic facts.
Rather, it was seen in much bigger terms; this was an issue of identity and
a threat to the region’s culture. The local press talked in terms of ‘170 years
of history under threat’ (The Gazette 29/09/2015).
Tom Blenkinsop, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland at
the time, said:

It’s the heart of our local economy, but more than that it’s our culture and
tradition. It’s the very identity of where we come from, the pride we take in
ourselves and our parents and grandparents before us. (Hansard
17/09/2015)

© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Warren, Industrial Teesside, Lives and Legacies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64540-7_1
2 J. Warren

These reactions show that in an increasingly post-industrial world,

where many of the industries that built modern Britain have faded from
view or disappeared altogether, the industrial past still matters and has
the power to evoke powerful emotions. What is happening on Teesside
now has happened in many communities in Britain, Northern Europe
and North America over the course of the last generation, it not only
signifies an economic shift but is also part of a much wider and profound
cultural transformation.
Things have moved on quickly. Hopes of saving the steelworks at
Redcar quickly faded. Despite widespread public outcry, rallies and dem-
onstrations there was no intervention from the UK government to save or
support the Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) operation. Instead the gov-
ernment held to the line that such closures are inevitable due to globalisa-
tion, and Business Minister Anna Soubry gave a predictable reaction:

The steel industry across the UK is facing very challenging economic con-
ditions. The price of steel has almost halved over the past year, with over-
production in the world market. Government cannot alter these conditions.
(The Guardian 28/09/2015)

So instead, a Task Force to deal with the fallout from the closure was
set up, with central government contributing £80 million. £30 million of
this was earmarked to deal with redundancy payments and the remaining
£50 million was made available to help people return to work, by provid-
ing training, placements for apprentices, help to start new businesses, and
supporting companies who had been part of the SSI supply chain.
Additionally, a report by former Conservative Trade and Industry minis-
ter Lord Heseltine was commissioned.
However, as a former union convenor from the plant pointed out to
me, the annual wages bill at SSI was around £120 million, for not much
more the plant could have been mothballed (as it had been in 2010) and
production resumed once the global steel demand began to rise (as it did
in 2016).
The former site, whilst having excellent access to Teesport, is also
highly contaminated, and with clean-up costs estimated to be in excess of
£1 billion (Heseltine Report 2016), it is unlikely then that the former
 Introduction 3

steelworks site will become an asset for Teesside’s economy in the near
future.
There have also been a number of further significant developments in the
past two years. In March 2016 the Indian-based steel conglomerate Tata
industries announced that it wished to sell its UK-based steel operations, in
particular the huge Port Talbot steelworks complex in South Wales, which
employs over 6000 workers directly and has a major role in the Welsh econ-
omy. This time both the devolved Welsh government and central govern-
ment were anxious to avoid closure, and got a lot more involved in trying
to help Tata find a buyer. This provoked a backlash on Teesside; why had
Redcar not attracted the same concern or SSI been given the same amount
of help as Port Talbot? Was this yet another case of Teesside and the North
East being marginalised and forgotten?
Another significant development for the region and a question I had
not considered when I wrote the initial outline for this book is:

What effect will the UK’s decision in the referendum of June 23rd 2016 to
leave the European Union have upon the region?

This is as yet unknown but what was very clear is that Teessiders were
amongst the most enthusiastic ‘Brexiteers’ in the UK. Teesside voted
overwhelmingly to leave the EU. In Redcar and Cleveland 66.2% voted
to leave the EU, in Middlesbrough 65.5%. Stockton voted to leave by a
margin of 61.7% and Hartlepool had the highest ‘leave’ vote in the region
with 69.6%. Darlington had the highest remain vote, but still 56.2%
voted to leave. This potentially has serious implications for a region that
is involved in a great deal of export activity and receives considerable
funding from the EU to clear up polluted sites (like Redcar Steelworks)
and had hoped to receive infrastructural funding for the new Tees
­crossing and link road endorsed by the Heseltine report (2016).
One potential explanation is that many in the region feel that they
have been left behind over the past 30 years; one of my research partici-
pants told me:

we have got nothing now; the industry has all gone that’s why I voted to
come out. (Focus group participant September 2016)
4 J. Warren

This may not be a rational response, as successive UK government

policies have had a great deal more to do with de-industrialisation than
the EU, nor is it true that “all the industry has gone”; Teesside still has a
higher than average amount of manufacturing employment than the rest
of the UK. It is, however, a response that needs to be investigated and
understood. Why people believe it to be true is important.
In early July 2016 I interviewed Anna Turley, MP for Redcar. She told
me that she felt the closure of SSI had made a big contribution to the
Brexit vote.

people blamed the EU as the government kept saying that EU regulations

meant that they couldn’t do anything to save the steelworks. (Anna Turley,
MP for Redcar July 2016)

What is undoubtedly true is that Teesside’s future post-Brexit is not

likely to be any more secure or clear than it is currently. It is also not clear
what the political implications of this are for the area’s traditional Labour-­
dominated politics. At first glance, the voters of Teesside appear to have
many of the features that the populist right has managed to mobilise in
recent times. Areas with declining industrial work and diminishing job
opportunities, older industrial areas that have suffered due to globalisation,
have been fertile ground for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and the
Republicans under Trump in the USA. In France such areas have been
attracted to the populist right, Marine Le Penn’s National Front, and also
the radical left, Jean Luc Melenchon’s France Untamed. Whether normal
service will be resumed in Teesside’s politics after Brexit remains to be seen.

Beyond Economics
So what has the economic impact of the closure of Redcar steelworks
been? There were 2066 directly employed SSI workers who were made
redundant as a result of the closure and 26 supply chain companies esti-
mated job losses to total 849 employees. By September 2016, 1 year on
from the closure, it was estimated that of the 2150 former SSI and supply
chain workers who claimed benefits, 1990 (93%) had moved off benefits.
 Introduction 5

Many are now in alternative employment, have started their own busi-
nesses, are in training or have taken retirement (SSI Task Force: One Year
On Report 2016: 5).
Figures such as these suggest that the area has managed to ‘absorb’ the
economic shock caused by the closure of the steelworks. However, there
is concern about the quality and sustainability of the employment that
workers have moved into, in particular some of the self-employment
start-ups as someone associated with the task force told me:

I’m not sure how long some of this will last, there are only so many burger
vans which you can have in one area.

The impact of the decline and closure of large industries can of course
be monitored and expressed in economic terms and figures can be pointed
to, but they only tell part of the story. Teesside is undoubtedly still an
important industrial area, in particular in the field of petrochemical
production.
Official figures from NOMIS (2015) show that the area has higher
than average employment in manufacturing, 9.3% of the labour force as
compared to the UK average of 8.3%, but surprisingly it is less than the
11% for the North East in general.
But figures do not tell the human story; yes, successful industries still
exist, but they do not provide employment on anything like the scale that
they once did. In October 2016 I went on a tour of the Wilton
International chemical and processing site, which had been organised by
SABIC chemicals. Anyone who was interested could go along as long as
they signed up in advance. There were several writers, reporters and
­photographers, as well as former employees from the site. Our tour guide
told us about the plants, which looked impressive in the night sky. He
announced that around 1500 workers currently worked on the site, at
which point a gentleman in the tour party remarked:

when I started work here at ICI there were 19,000 workers on this site.

What is clear is that whilst there is emotional attachment to industries

such as steel and chemicals, what their passing or reinvention represents
6 J. Warren

to many people is the loss of something—the loss of the security and

certainty of work that existed for many and has disappeared within less
than a lifetime.
This was also expressed by Keith, a former ICI worker whom I spoke
to on several occasions in the course of the research. This quote from him
illustrates a great deal:

I worked for ICI from when I left school until I was 52, my whole working
life. I earnt a decent living, and really we were well looked after. You could
buy a house and didn’t have to worry about booking holidays in advance,
you knew you’d be able to pay for it. What have kids got today? My son still
lives with us and he works in Sainsbury’s, lots of his mates are on zero hour
contracts. There are only so many retail parks and cafes you can open; it
seems the only people with any money to spend are people like us. The
whole area is living on the pensions of people like me who worked for ICI
or British Steel.

Why Teesside?
The idea for this book began during a research project attempting to
assess the impact of ‘austerity’-driven, neoliberal policies, welfare reform
and spending cuts upon the borough of Stockton-on-Tees. This area has
high levels of inequality and the highest life expectancy inequality in
England for both men and women.
In order to understand this, it is not only essential to understand the
place as it is today, but the historic processes and forces that shaped it. In
other words, it is necessary to understand the biography of the place.
Stockton-on-Tees and the wider Teesside conurbation can be described as
a post-industrial area. The term post-industrial, as Byrne (2005) has
pointed out, does not necessarily mean that there is no longer any indus-
try at all within an area; indeed within Teesside chemicals, steel, engineer-
ing and manufacturing are still important contributors to the area. But
what is different is the size and the scale of such industries. Crucially they
no longer exist on the same scale, have the same significance or require
the amount of labour they once did. In the past, the area was thought to
be significantly different to the rest of the North East region. Hudson,
 Introduction 7

Beynon and Sadler as recently as 1994 argued that the area was “in the
North East but not of the North East”. However, it can now be argued
that it has more in common with the wider region. Within the North
East, industry and manufacturing survive and are still major players
within the local economy; for example, Nissan on Wearside. But the hey-
day of the ‘carborniferous capitalism’ that established the shape of and
dominated Tyneside, Wearside and Durham via a complex web of coal,
steel, heavy engineering and shipbuilding has of course long since passed.
Teesside’s story is similar but its trajectory changed during the early twen-
tieth century with the development of the chemical industry and steelmak-
ing, both of which expanded until the late 1970s. These industries, although
much diminished in terms of their output and workforces, still retain a
powerful visual presence and exercise a strong emotional grip. The legacies
of the industries that dominated both Stockton-on-­Tees and the wider
Teesside area for the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
continue to contribute both directly and indirectly to the issues faced by the
area today. Consequently, the area’s past still shapes its future and influences
the ways in which that future is conceived and envisioned. Industries
change—they develop, adapt and sometimes disappear altogether; however,
it is clear that the ways of life—attitudes, practices and expectations—that
they helped to establish do not, they remain, in the shape of “industrial
structures of feeling” (Williams 1973). For good or ill, they persist and that
persistence is significant. Being ‘post-­industrial’ is not just a matter of eco-
nomic change, it is one of social and cultural transformation. This book will
try to understand the ongoing transition and the tensions between what
Williams termed the “residual” and “emergent” cultures.
At the heart of this book are two key questions:

Firstly, what are the legacies of the area’s industrial past?

Secondly, how do those legacies contribute to its present situation and its
future prospects?

I have tried to answer these questions using archive material, in-depth

interviews and visually-based focus groups. In these groups participants
were given an outline of the project, then asked to look at around 50
photographs of the region portraying industry, industrial work, and the
8 J. Warren

industrial and post-industrial landscape and then comment upon them.

In depth interviews took place with key stakeholders including: those
who worked/are still working in traditional industries; local employers,
training providers and trade unions; local government and related devel-
opment agencies; community workers and community representatives;
campaigning organisations in the local area; academics and commenta-
tors with an interest in the area.

Teesside and me
This book uses the idea of biography as one of its central themes and it
has made me reflect on my relationship with Teesside. I am not from
Teesside or even the North East, I come from the South London suburbs.
It was my Dad who first made me aware of a place called Teesside. My
Dad worked in engineering, he was in sales and project management, and
when I was a kid he worked for various large engineering companies like
William Press and Balfour Beatty. Dad was always off somewhere to a
meeting in one of many company Ford Cortinas (or in later years Sierras).
I would often ask Dad where he was going before he went to work or if
he had left early when he came home, the answer would usually be ‘the
office’ (Sidcup in the South London/Kent Hinterland), but often it would
be Teesside, quite a round trip in a day, around 500 miles and in the late
1970s and early 1980s before the M25 opened this involved crossing
London. Something which was all too common I suppose in the days
before mobile phones, email, the internet or skype. I believe that when
Dad said Teesside what he really meant was ICI. Balfour Beatty were
involved with numerous projects at both the Billingham and Wilton sites
that involved putting in boilers and turbines for the sites’ power stations.
Of course, it was around this time that ICI was at its zenith, approaching
the point in 1985 where it would be the first British company to make
over £1 billion profit in a financial year. But it was some years before
Teesside became more than just a name of somewhere my Dad went to
work. As a sixth form student in the late 1980s exchange trips were com-
mon, usually with France or Germany for those studying languages.
However, our Government and Politics teachers came up with something
 Introduction 9

rather different. The idea of a North–South divide had come to promi-

nence and was becoming the hot political topic of the day, largely a con-
sequence of the savage and sudden de-industrialisation that had been
accelerated by the Thatcher government’s abandonment of the ‘post-war
consensus’ and its haste to embrace what was then called ‘free market
economics’, and what we now call the Neoliberal project. The discussion
of this divide had become a key feature of political discourse; what’s more
it was not a divide that looked likely to disappear in the summer of 1987.
The Conservatives had just been returned to power with a third consecu-
tive general election victory. Neil Kinnock’s rebranded and ‘Militant free’
Labour party with its new red rose logo had failed to make an impression.
It was against this backdrop that me and my fellow students were offered
the opportunity to go on an exchange trip to ‘the North’. What became
known as the ‘Northern exchange’ was made possible by one of our teach-
ers, who had a good friend who was working at Billingham Sixth Form
College. The idea was that we would travel to Teesside, stay with our hosts
in their homes, and attend college with them before they came
‘down South’ to do the same with us. Additionally, there would be trips
to see local places of interest and industries. The idea proved popular;
after all, it meant a trip with our mates to a new place, even if the motives
of some were questioned by the teachers. One friend who had moved
from Huddersfield a couple of years before was asked: “Why do you want
to go on a northern exchange?? You’re from the North!”.
So in early July 1987 we piled into the school minibus and set off on
the long journey to Teesside. The skyline that became visible as we
approached from the south after what seemed like many hours in a small
minibus made an immediate and lasting impression on me; coming over
the Tees flyover, ICI Billingham was like nothing I had ever seen before.
Over the next week we saw a lot of the region. The girl I stayed with lived
in Hartburn, her parents were both school teachers. She had an older
boyfriend who drove a Ford Capri, which took us on tours of pubs around
Hartburn, Eaglescliffe and Yarm, and even across the North York Moors
to Scarborough. My friends were dispersed for the week across Teesside, in
Billingham, Stockton and Middlesbrough, but we were all brought
together at Billingham College. I can’t remember a great deal about the
classes we had whilst there. However, many of us were very impressed by
10 J. Warren

the fact the college offered a common room for smokers, whereas our own
sixth form made us leave the premises to indulge our unhealthy but still
in those days socially acceptable habit! The programme that had been
organised was varied and we travelled across the region. We visited
Beamish Museum and the recently opened Gateshead Metro Centre, then
billed as Europe’s biggest indoor shopping centre and at the time a great
novelty! The summer weather also meant a trip to Runswick Bay on the
North Yorkshire coast, with some foolhardy souls braving a swim in the
North Sea. The parts of the week that made the biggest impression on me
were the visits we made to industrial sites on Teesside; I was impressed by
the scale of it all and how close it was to both town and country. A drive
out to Seal Sands showed us the oil refinery, but also we saw grey seals on
the shoreline too. We crossed the Transporter Bridge, in those days painted
green and more of a relic from the past than the Teesside icon it has since
become. The highlight of the week as far as I was concerned was tour of
British Steel at Redcar. After an introductory briefing and explanation
about the steelmaking process we were driven round the site and up
toward the blast furnace. The furnace was being tapped with molten steel
running into vessels to be taken away; even from a distance this was an
impressive sight. We got much closer to red hot steel at Lackenby beam
mill, where after donning hard hats we watched as steel ingots were rolled
and processed into beams. Standing on the gantries above the track we
could feel the heat from the beams passing below us. I remember thinking
how modern it all was as we talked to the guy in the control room who
adjusted and monitored the process as the red hot steel moved along the
rollers. Nearly 30 years on, despite all the changes to industry on Teesside,
the beam mill remains and my interest in the industries that built the
region, their remains, their legacies and their potential futures endures.

The Structure of This Book

 hapter 2: Understanding Biographies of Place.
C
Industrial Teesside

This chapter begins by explaining the methodological approach used in

the book, the theoretical concepts around ideas of de-industrialisation
 Introduction 11

and post-industrialism and why Teesside is a good place to examine these

ideas. It then goes on to outline the idea of ‘biography of place’, which
underpins the book.

Chapter 3: Industrial Teesside’s Biography

The industrial revolution began in Britain, and the North East was the
first true industrial region. Teesside was part of the industrial age from
day one. The Stockton to Darlington railway provided the model for a
transport revolution. Engineering, rail and the movement of coal from
the inland coalfields to the sea provided the spur to the region’s industrial
take off. Middlesbrough’s access to iron ore in the Cleveland hills saw the
town rapidly rise to become ‘Ironopolis’, a major centre of iron and steel
production. In the twentieth century iron and steel were joined by the
chemical industry with ICI’s huge plants at Billingham and Wilton. This
chapter outlines the region’s rise in the nineteenth century, its develop-
ment and its decline since the 1970s.

Chapter 4: Exploring Teesside’s Visual Legacies

This chapter outlines and reflects upon the discussions and themes that
emerged in the visual focus groups that were conducted between
September and December 2016. The composition of the groups and the
method that was followed are explained, as well as the nature of the pho-
tographs that were used as visual prompts. Finally, the responses the
groups had to the photographs, the comments they made are discussed
and the themes which emerged across the events explored.

 hapter 5: Changing Industry, Transforming Lives:

C
Social and Cultural Legacies

This chapter explores the idea that when work changes, then so does wider
society. It does this through in-depth interviews that examine the lives and
experiences of individuals who have lived and worked through the changes
Teesside has undergone since the 1970s. The topics covered include atti-
12 J. Warren

tudes to work, work and status, job security and whether people believe
their working lives are better or worse than they once were. It also
explores further the themes that emerged from the visual focus groups and
attempts to make sense of the relationship between the past the present.

Chapter 6: Two Teessides?—A Legacy of Inequalities

Teesside is a place of contrasts; it is profoundly unequal. In Stockton on

Tees male life expectancy at birth varies by 17 and a half years, female life
expectancy by 11 and half years between the most deprived and least
deprived parts of the town, the largest health gap in England. This pat-
tern is similar across the wider Teesside region. The poorest places are as
deprived as any within England the richest as affluent as any within
England. This chapter examines the economic and social inequalities on
Teesside, asks how the industrial past contributed to them, and whether
current national social policies and local initiatives are likely to have an
impact upon them.

 hapter 7: Conclusion: Place, People

C
and the Post-industrial

This concluding chapter revisits the discussions of the earlier chapters

and assesses how an understanding of the area’s industrial past might be
of benefit to the area; those trying to shape its future and what that future
may look like. Furthermore it asks what the implications for policy may
be and what further challenges will be presented by Brexit.

References
Beynon, H., Hudson, R., & Sadler, D. (1994). A place called Teesside: A locality
in a global economy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Byrne, D. S. (2005). The nature of post-industrialism- South Tyneside in the
twenty-first century. Northern Economic Review, 36, 1–14.
Emergency Debate on Redcar Steel. (2015, September 16) Hansard
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Nieuwe Kerk, 22;
Oude Kerk, 22.
Dieppe—
St. Jacques, 14;
St. Rémi, 14.
Dijon—
The Cathedral, 14.
Durham—
The Cathedral, 11.

Frankfort—
The Cathedral, 26.
Freiburg, Switzerland—
St. Nicolas, 28.
Freiburg-im-Bresgau—
The Cathedral, 26;
St. ——, 26.

Geneva—
The Cathedral, 28;
English Church, 29.
Ghent (Gand)—
The Cathedral (St. Bavon), 20;
Béguinage, 21;
English Church, 21;
St. Jacques, 21;
St. Michael, 21;
St. Nicolas, 21.
Gouda—
Janskerk (St. John’s), 22.

Haarlem—
Grootekerk (St. Bavon), 23.
Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc)—
St. Janskirk, 23.

Innsbruck—
 Hof-kirche, 27;
Jesuits’ Church, 27.
Isola Bella—
Parish Church, 30.

Laon—
The Cathedral, 14.
Liége—
St. Jacques, 21.
Lisieux—
St. Pierre (formerly the Cathedral), 14;
St. Jacques, 14.
London—
St. Paul’s Cathedral, 10;
All Hallows, Lombard Street, 10;
Christchurch, Newgate Street, 10;
St. Clement’s, Eastcheap, 10;
St. Lawrence, Jewry, 10;
St. Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge, 11;
St. Olave’s, Southwark, 11;
St. Sepulchre’s, 11.
Louvain—
St. Pierre, 21.
Lucerne—
Hof-kirche (St. Leger), 29;
English Church, 30.
Lyons—
The Cathedral, 14.

Madonna di Tirano—
Il Santuario, 31.
Magdeburg—
The Cathedral, 27.
Malines—
The Cathedral, 21;
St Jean 22;
 St. Jean, 22;
Notre Dame, 22.
Mayence—
The Cathedral, 27.
Mechlin (Malines).
Milan—
The Cathedral, 31;
San Ambrogio, 31;
San Giovanni in Lateran, 31;
San Lorenzo, 31;
Santa Maria delle Grazie, 31;
Santa Maria Pudone, 32;
San ——, in the Via di Giadini, 32.
Munich—
Jesuits’ Church, 27.

Paris—
Notre Dame, 15;
St. Eustache, 15.
Prague—
The Cathedral, 27;
Monastery of Strahow, 27.

Rheims—
The Cathedral, 15;
St. André, 15;
St. Rémi, 15.
Rotterdam—
Groote Kerk (St. Lawrence), 24.
Rouen—
The Cathedral, 15;
Canteleu, 16;
St. Georges de Boscherville, 16;
St. Maclou, 16;
Notre Dame de Bon Secours, 16;
St. Ouen, 16;
St. Sever, 16;
 St. Sever, 16;
St. Vincent, 17;
St. Vivien, 17.

St. Bernard—
Hospice, 29.
St. Lo—
The Cathedral (formerly), 17;
St. Croix, 17.
St. Ricquier—
The Abbey Church, 17.
Schwarz—
Pfarrkirche, 27.
Strasburg—
The Cathedral, 17.

Troyes—
The Cathedral, 17;
St. Jean, 18;
St. Nizier, 18;
St. Rémi, 18.

Utrecht—
The Cathedral, 24;
St. Nicolas, 25.

York—
Minster, 11.
he ox f histles.
 CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

HE Box of Whistles! what a quaint title! Yes, but a good

one, I think, for this book, as the old organ of Father
Smith’s in St. Paul’s, “The Box of Whistles,” as Sir
Christopher Wren contemptuously called it, was the first
organ I ever saw, and which gave me my bent in the liking
of things pertaining to the organ. Well do I recollect standing, a very
small boy, under the Dome of St. Paul’s, on a dark winter’s
afternoon, looking at Grinling Gibbons’ noble case, hearing some
grand out-going voluntary, and trying to see the angels put their
trumpets to their mouths, when the reeds were drawn, which I could
never catch them doing. Now the organ is perhaps the only
instrument which gives equal gratification to three separate classes
of individuals, who are often very different in other respects, the
Musician, the Mechanician, and the Architect. The Musician likes it
for its tone and power, giving sounds which no other instrument can
give, and imitating the tones of almost every other instrument. The
Mechanician likes it as a complicated machine; and the different
modes of its action, and the varied ways of supplying it with wind,
are sources of pleasure and amusement to him. The Architect
admires its noble look, as it stands towering high in Cathedral,
Church, or Concert Room, its case covered with carved work, and its
pipes bright with gilding, be its style Gothic or Renaissance.
Remember that an organ is built, other musical instruments are
made. The Musician very likely cares not for its look, so long as the
tone pleases him, and possibly knows little, and cares less, how the
sound is produced. The Mechanician is pleased to know how and
why certain tones and effects are obtained, caring perhaps very little
for real music, and as for the case, he never gives it a thought. The
Architect may have but small knowledge of music; as for the
mechanical part of the instrument, it is not in the least in his line; but
he does feel the impress of its grandeur, and admires the complex
design of a large and well-built organ case. I am no player, but I
much like the sound of an organ, and to hear good music played on
it.
Of mechanics I have some knowledge, but it is in general difficult
to get a sight of the internal works of an organ. They are well
described in Hopkins’s work, “The Organ,” 1870, and the
“Encyclopédie Roret,” 1849, which, in its valuable reprint of Dom
Bedos, “L’Art du Facteur des Orgues,” gives excellent details and
good engravings. To me it seems a pity that this work has not been
translated into English, and brought down to the present time, as
technical terms in a foreign language are difficult even to good
linguists. To the organ builder, it is a more useful work than that of
Mr. Hopkins, as the French book is for the practical man, while the
English work is for the general reader. I am not an architect, but in
my leisure hours architecture and drawing have been my
amusements. For some years I have sketched and taken notes of
the different organs which I have had the good fortune to see either
at home or abroad, and I now venture to publish (a small quota to
general knowledge) my notes and drawings of organs, the collecting
of which has been my recreation for many an hour. I think that the
ground on which I now venture has not as yet been occupied by any
one.
Mr. Hopkins gives but general information about organ cases,
and no engravings. The “Encyclopédie Roret” gives more particulars,
and also furnishes a few engravings, and the English edition of
“Seidel’s Treatise on the Organ” is very cursory on this subject.
Further information can be gleaned from the Rev. F. H. Sutton’s
“Short Account of Organs Built in England,” &c., 1847, which gives
small woodcuts of the typical cases of the old English builders, and
at the end of the work, five designs of the late Mr. Pugin are given,
which are worth studying; and from “Some Account of the Mediæval
Organ Case,” &c., 1866, and “Church Organs,” 1872, by the Rev.
F. H. Sutton, both of which are very good for reference. Mr.
Faulkner’s “Designs for Organs,” 1838, is now rather out of date, but
C. K. K. Bishop’s “Notes on Church Organs” gives nice suggestive
plates. If the very fine and exhaustive work on “Foreign Gothic
Organs,” mentioned by the Rev. Mr. Sutton in his “Mediæval Organ
Case,” 1866, should ever see light, it would be first-class, as it would
contain drawings and details of the best Gothic organs, which are
rare, and of which it is difficult to obtain drawings or descriptions.
There are many small works which give drawings, &c., to which I do
not more particularly refer, out of which useful information may be
gleaned.
What I wish to put before my readers in this book, is a short
description of the different classes of organ cases, with my remarks
and notes of various instruments, illustrated by lithographs and
chromo-lithographs, from my own sketches. Having now explained
my intention, I have to beg those who read this, my first work, not to
be very severe on my errors and shortcomings.
 CHAPTER II.
THE ORGAN CASE.

(Buffet, French; Orgel Gehause, German; Kist o’

Whistles, Scotticè).

Division into Four Classes.—Subdivisions of ditto.

RGAN cases may broadly be divided into four classes.

Firstly, those which stand at the end of the nave or
transept of a Church, or the end of a Concert Room.
Secondly, organs which are pendent from the side of the
nave or choir of a large Church. Thirdly, organs which
stand on Choir Screens; and Fourthly, organs standing on the
ground. Of these classes many sub-divisions may be made. Of the
organs in these four classes, those in No. 1 are in general the most
imposing, those in No. 2 the most picturesque, those in No. 3 the
best for sound, and those in No. 4 require some skill to make them
rival their compeers. Class 1 may be sub-divided into—
A. Those which fill the entire end, or nearly so, of the building
in which they stand;

B. Those which have a window, or “Rose” over them; and,

C. Divided Organs, and those with exceptionally designed

cases.
 A. This sub-class (a very ordinary one in England and Holland)
has the finest cases in the world, for I suppose that the grandest and
most elaborate case in Europe is that in St. Jan’s Church,
Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), rich in sculptured oak, and bright with
burnished tin pipes and gilding. Externally, although it has not got so
many stops, it is as large as its well-known neighbour at Haarlem,
which has till lately been considered the type of a “Great Organ.”
Haarlem has a noble case, with excellent pipe-work within, but its
effect is injured by paint. The organ in the Hof Kirche, Lucerne, also
has quaint oak carving in its thirty-two feet front, and for pretty cases,
that at St. Jacques, Liége, by some considered the best of its kind,
and the Organs in St. Lawrence, Jewry, and St. Stephen’s,
Walbrook, the last looking somewhat like a miniature of that at
Troyes, may be cited as good examples.
B. A sub-class to which very many of the large French organs
may be referred. In general, these are more picturesque than those
in Sub-class A, not that the absolute design is so, but that the
architectural effect of the window above the case makes a most
effective combination. In France, the usual window is a Rose, a form
I think the best for the termination of a nave or transept, and when
this is filled with stained glass, as is often the case, the effect is all
that can be desired. The organs in Amiens, Rheims, Troyes, and
Rouen Cathedrals, and also in Rouen in the Churches of St. Ouen
and St. Maclou, are first-class examples. This sub-class is rare in
England, few of our churches being sufficiently lofty to allow an
organ to stand in such a position.
Sub-class C. is employed to show the west window. Fair
examples are to be seen at St. Gudule, Bruxelles, and in Gray’s Inn
Chapel. Among the exceptional cases, that in the Cathedral Church
of St. Vitus at Prague, is one of the most curious, being cut up into
four divisions, and scattered about the west galleries; and for an ugly
style of exceptional case, there is one in a church in Ghent, about as
ugly as can well be wished.
Class II. This class, as I have mentioned before, is highly
picturesque, but is not very common. Good examples are to be seen
in Strasburg and Chartres Cathedrals, and in the Minster at Freiburg,
in Bresgau, all pendent in the nave; and there is a grand modern
example hanging in the north side of the Choir at Ely. Organs which
may be placed in this class are not uncommonly built against the
east wall of the Transept in large Belgian churches: one in the
cathedral church of St. Bavon, Ghent, is a good example. There
must be some difficulty in building a large instrument in this position,
and a lofty church is required to contain it.
Class III. may likewise be subdivided into two divisions: A. Single
Cases, often with a Choir Organ in front; and B. Divided Cases. Of
the former sub-class, the old organ in St. Paul’s was in every way a
fine example. The old organ in Durham Cathedral was the best of
Father Smith’s usual design, all his cases having a strong family
likeness, that at St Paul’s being almost the only exception. The case
on the Grand Screen in York Minster, although perhaps not in the
best taste, is effective; and of the latter sub-class, the organ in St.
Jacques, Antwerp, is excellent, and is worth the study of any one
who may have to erect a divided “Screen Organ.” The much-divided
organ case in Westminster Abbey I am Goth enough to call bad.
Class IV. The divisions of this class are numerous, and often
occur in modern churches. A. those standing on the floor against the
wall of the nave or chancel. St Mary’s, Nottingham, has a first-class
modern specimen, an amplification of the organ case in Strasburg
Cathedral. B. Those standing in the nave, aisle, or some corner. A
good example of an old case in the first position, is in St. Clement’s,
East Cheap; and the organ in All Hallows, Lombard Street, is a good
specimen of one in the second position. Both these instruments, not
so many years ago, stood in galleries at the west end of their
respective churches. C. Those in Organ Chambers, examples of
which, I am sorry to say, are common in new and restored Churches.
D. Those in Organ Chapels, which are rather better for effect than
those in Sub-class C. St. George’s, Doncaster, is an example of an
organ of the largest size in this position. E. Those standing free
under the arches of the Choir of a Cathedral or large church. In the
Cathedral at Hereford is a large modern organ in this position. F.
Organs with Divided cases. St. Paul’s and Durham Cathedral have
good examples of this form, which I fancy is modern and peculiar to
England.
In Italy and Spain, there are often two Great organs, one on
each side of the Choir or Nave, which arrangement, conjointly with a
double Choir of Singers, is capable of the grandest effects of
antiphonal music. As good examples in Italy, may be mentioned the
organs in Milan Cathedral on each side of the Choir, and those in
Como Cathedral on each side of the Nave. Those in Milan are
externally alike, and those in Como differ in appearance. In Spain,
two organs are usual in Cathedrals and large churches, and the two
organs in Seville Cathedral have magnificent cases.

Class I.—A. Filling the entire end of the building.

B. With a window or rose over.
C. Divided and exceptional cases.
„ II.—No subdivision.
„ III.—A. Single cases, or with choir in front.
B. Divided cases.
„ IV.—A. Against wall of nave or choir.
B. Standing in a corner, or in aisle of nave.
C. In organ chambers.
D. In organ chapels.
E. Under arches of choir.
F. Divided instruments.
 CHAPTER III.
WHAT A GOOD CASE SHOULD BE.

Style not necessarily Gothic.—Renaissance Style.—Tin Pipes

now seldom used.—An Organ Case need not correspond
with the Style of Architecture of the Building.—English Cases
during the last hundred years.—An Organ Case should be
good.—Unequal Number of Towers.—Ponts.—Oak and other
Woods.—Culs-de-Lampe.—Ornaments.—Arrangement of
Pipes.—Arrangement of Towers.

EFORE I proceed any further with this Chapter, I may as

well mention that I fear I may a little shock some persons
with my views of what is a good organ case. I have long
ceased to think that nothing but Gothic is correct, and feel
pleasure in looking at any style of architecture (excepting
the modern ultra-Gothic, and even this affords me a certain amount
of amusement). I have, when the Gothic fit was upon me, passed
many a fine organ with a mere glance, at which I should now look
with delight. When I see some of our modern Norman and Gothic
cases, I wonder what the men of the date which these make-believe
cases pretend to be would think of them. I suspect that they would
look at them with amazement. The illuminations in manuscripts do
not give us much help, and the drawings which they hand down to us
are those of very small instruments. Some few cases in the later
period of Gothic are in existence at Perpignan, Strasburg, Gonesse,
New Radnor, and in some few places in Germany, but with the
exception of the one at Strasburg, I have not been so fortunate as to
get a sight of any. With the advent of the Renaissance Style, organs
began to increase in size, so that larger and more architectural
cases were requisite, and we do not even now excel in design and
workmanship many of the old Flemish, Dutch, and French organs.
Carved oak is now an expensive luxury, and pipes of tin, with their
silver-like lustre, are things of the past. The price of tin, and the
cheap contract system, have a good deal to do with this state of
things; and town atmosphere seems to tarnish tin work in a very
short time: about Manchester it cannot be used, and at Rouen I have
seen bright pipe-work, which had been up but a few years, look as
tarnished as if it had been up for fifty years at least. I like an organ to
have a really good case; it is a large and necessary piece of furniture
in both church and concert-room; and I can see no reason why it
should not be in keeping with the building in which it stands. By this I
do not intend that its architectural style should be the same, but that
there should be a certain agreement together, and a fitness one for
the other. Viollet le Duc, I think, was wise in retaining the old
Renaissance case of the organ in Notre Dame (Paris), when the
whole of its contents were taken away, and an entirely new organ
erected in it. No man in France could have better designed a Gothic
case, but he preferred leaving the old work, which well suited its
position. In general all fittings of a later date than the building in
which they stand, if they are really good of their kind, should be
respected. Much new work, intended to be quite in keeping with the
building, and following precedent, is but little more than guesswork.
In an old Norman church, it would be I think foolish to erect a
Norman case: we have nothing to guide us as to what an organ was
like in outward appearance at that date, but we do know that it was a
rather rudely made affair, from “Theophilus’s Treatise on Organ
Building;” and we are equally at sea for any precedent for an early
Gothic organ. Late cases are here and there to be seen, and many
of them are handsome, but it was the builders of the Renaissance
Period who first erected those structures of carved wood, for the
abode of the noblest of instruments. For many years good cases
continued to be built; they never quite ceased erecting them in
France and Belgium; but I have nothing to say in favour of our
English cases for the last hundred years. We do better now, but I
look upon caseless organs, with their rows of painted pipes, as
something horrid. A good piano always has a good case; we do not
dream of buying, or the vendor of selling, a first-class instrument in a
paltry one; and why a really well-built and good-toned organ is put
into a plain deal varnished case, like a common cheap schoolroom
piano, is a puzzle to me. Father Smith appears to have had a pattern
case, which is excellent in outline, and suitable to all his organs,
large or small, except his chamber instruments, and Harris also
rarely departed from his one design, a very pretty one. The old
French builders appeared to have followed a few general rules, viz.,
that an organ should have an unequal number of towers, say three,
five, or seven; and if, as was usual, the Choir case stood in front, it
should have a smaller number of towers, say the Great case had
five, the Choir had three; that if the centre tower of the Great was the
tallest, the centre tower of the Choir should be the least, and vice
versâ; and very good rules these are. It was also their practice to
form the mouths of the pipes in the towers, different to those in the
flats, and the pipes in the towers stood on square blocks of wood
(ponts), whilst the pipes in the flats stood on plinths. These little
niceties add much to the appearance of an organ. Renatus Harris
used to finish his pipes in the French manner. I prefer oak to any
wood for case work. Polished ebonised wood with ormolu mouldings
(as at the Foundling) looks well, and good cabinet work has been
done in mahogany. Walnut and rosewood may do for chamber
instruments, but would have rather a harmonium look about them. If I
were building a drawing-room organ, I should certainly use oak, with
plenty of carving and no varnish; wax polish would perhaps be
advisable to tone down the new look, but with very fine sharp work
the wood should be left as it comes fresh from the carver’s hands. In
a cheap instrument plain deal with good varnish looks better than
painted wood, with or without stencilled patterns, and where the
large wood pipes are shown, they are best plain. The upper part of
the case being wider than the base (a very common arrangement in
old French instruments), is an improvement to its outline. Another
French usage, to support the large outer towers on giants, is good,
especially for their large cases; and “the culs-de-lampe,” or consoles
of the towers, are improved by sculptured heads, paniers of flowers,
or intricate open-work. I do not object to what I have heard called a
“covey” of plump cherubim. With respect to the mouldings, a little
departure from strict rules does not hurt, and it is best not to err on
the side of shallowness: bold projections and deep curves look well,
and circular towers should project rather more than half their
diameter; the cornices should certainly project boldly—recollect they
are wood, and rules for stone cornices need not be closely adhered
to, but they must not overhang each other (Chevaucher is the
French term), as that does not look well. Statues on the summits of
the towers I like to see, although of course they are a useless
expense; and there is a wide choice as to what they should be.
Angels with trumpets or harps are excellent. King David with his
harp, St. Cecilia with her organ, are very usual. Winged angels with
lutes are not uncommon on Flemish organs: the patron saint of the
church is correct. Pope Gregory, as the founder of the Catholic
chant; St. Ambrose, the writer of the “Te Deum;” Guido D’Arezzo, the
inventor of the gamut, and several others may be mentioned as fit
subjects for statuary work. Crowns and mitres for Church and State
are good terminals for an English organ, and the arms of the reigning
sovereign can well be introduced in the carving: for a good example,
see the old organ in St. Paul’s. The shades (claires voies) of an
organ should be well carved, and in some designs the introduction of
winged angel heads is very suitable: in general they should be left
plain; gilding clashes with bright tin, and offers no contrast with gilt
pipes. In the north of Europe the tops of the pipes are concealed by
the shades, but in Italy they are free, and it is an open question
which mode is the best. Either of these arrangements is better than
the tops of the pipes shewing above the case with fanciful crowns on
them. The northern mode saves a little in height, which sometimes is
an advantage. Carved open-work or wings at the sides of the organ,
though useless, are often picturesque; occasionally they hide large
wood pipes posted outside the case, which are, in general, additions
to the original contents, and then they are useful.
For effect, the wood-work should not fill the entire breadth of the
space in which the organ stands, but shew itself as a case, and not
as a screen to hide the internal arrangements. The case at Lucerne,
good as the work is, fails in this particular: it is a screen at the west
end of the church, to hide the organ, not a case for it. English organs
often err in the reverse manner, and look like square boxes. A
broader and shallower form is preferable, but English feeling is, I am
afraid, in favour of the square form. The case at Haarlem has been
quoted as spoiling the tone of the instrument, and on the other hand,
a French writer on the organ, C. M. Philbert, states, “Un artiste
habitant Paris nous disait, ces jours derniers, qu’en payant le prix
fixé pour les auditions particulières de l’orgue de Haarlem, on ne
payait pas trop cher, ne fût-ce que le seul plaisir d’en admirer la
magnificence extérieure.” I tried at Haarlem to detect if the tone were
smothered by the case, but could not in the least perceive any such
defect. The quality is very mellow, which is very pleasing to the ear,
and is without the harshness which now-a-days is called boldness of
tone. Towers boldly projecting, either half circular or pointed, are an
improvement to the design of a case. Flat towers, which in general
are flush with the flats, or only project slightly, although used in some
few cases, do not give that play of light and shade which is so
effective in a design. Where shutters, curtains, or blinds, are used,
projecting towers are in the way; but in Holland are to be seen small
cases with shutters, which follow all the ins-and-outs of cases much
broken in plan. They must be difficult to make and to keep from
warping, and when large must be troublesome to open or close.
Opinions are divided as to the usefulness of these appendages to an
organ, no doubt they are often most picturesque.
 CHAPTER IV.
THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE PIPES.

Number of the Pipes.—Not all of the Same Height.—Two Tiers

of Pipes.—Oval and Circular Openings.—Pipes arranged in
Perspective.—Carved Panels.—Inverted Pipes.—Double
Pipes.—Projecting Mouths.—Fancy Mouldings on Pipes.—
Pipes, gilt—diapered—painted—tin—bronzed.—Tubes of
Reed Stops projecting horizontally.—Tuba at York.

HE usual number of pipes in each tower is in England

three, in France five, and in Germany seven (in the Tyrol,
flat towers with seven pipes are the rule); but to these
numbers there are many exceptions. Towers with two
stories of pipes are in use in Holland, Belgium, and
Germany, but I cannot call to mind any in England or in France. In
general the number of pipes in the upper story exceeds that of the
lower. A single pipe either forming a compartment, or projecting so
as to form a tower, is not a good feature, except when, as in some of
the North German organs, a thirty-two feet pipe is used as a tower.
In some flat towers, four pipes are inserted instead of five; but an
uneven number, I think, is more satisfactory to the eye. It does not
look well for all the pipes in a compartment to be of the same height,
and it is still worse when all the flats are alike: for this reason the
organ in Exeter Hall is ugly, and good as the case is in Rouen
Cathedral, it would be much improved if some gradation in the pipe
lengths were introduced into its four similar compartments.
In the flats, two tiers of pipes are common in English and Dutch
organs, and in Holland more often appear in large cases. Oval and
circular openings for pipes are used in England, and more rarely in
France: it is an artificial mode of arranging pipe work. There are a
few examples of pipes being arranged to form a perspective, which
may be looked upon as a fanciful conceit. Panels carved to give the
same effect are not quite so outré. In Holland and North Germany,
inverted pipes are to be met with: they in general stand on the wood
framing, but at Perpignan (France) there is a flat of inverted pipes
which hang from the case by their feet. I fancy that in general these
are shams, but an inverted pipe would not be liable to be choked
with dust. In Dutch fronts occasionally double pipes, or what may be
more correctly styled two pipes with their feet joined together, are
used: those that I have seen were dummies, as no means of
supplying them with wind was to be seen. Projecting mouths are a
great finish to large pipes. French builders are often very good at this
work; but it may be overdone, as in the new organ in Chester
Cathedral, where the mouths are certainly exaggerated. Old French
builders sometimes inserted a few pipes with various fancy
mouldings about them, brightened with paint. The organ of Gonesse
has some, and two are preserved as curiosities in the Museum at
Beauvais. Pipes with their surface hammered into facets are rare. At
Hertogenbosch, the centre pipes of the towers are so treated, and
are also plain gilt; but that in the central tower is parcel gilt. Belgian
and Dutch organs often have the mouths of their bright tin pipes gilt,
which has a good effect. I have no great liking for diapered (painted
or illuminated) pipes, even if it has taken a fortnight to paint each, as
has lately been done; it gives the idea that it is necessary to hide bad
workmanship, or poor metal. Coronals to the pipes, however
elaborate, had best be eschewed, although in caseless organs they
give a sort of finish to the pipes. But after all I have said against
painted pipes, one cannot help liking the bright appearance of a
small case, with well-coloured pipes, even if one doubts how it will
look after a few years, when the freshness has departed. Plain
gilding perhaps looks well longer than anything else. Tin pipes, when
dull, have a very neglected look; and nothing can look worse than
bronzed pipes. In Spain, it is the custom to place the Reed Stops so
that their tubes project horizontally, or at an angle from the case: this
A
throws out their sound. This arrangement is not common in
England, but might be adopted with good effect both for tone and
appearance. The Tuba at York, projecting from the west façade of
the organ, is most satisfactory in both respects; any arranging of
trumpets, like a fan or half-circle at the top of the case, is as well
avoided.

A
At Leeds, the pipes of the solo portion of the
Town-hall Organ are entirely placed horizontally,
and it is stated that this increases their power
from 20 to 30 per cent.