Sandwell Colliery coal chutes about to be demolished

The internet chat rooms and forums are buzzing furiously muttering a bit about the old Sandwell Colliery coal chutes (also called 'Smethick coal shutes' and variant names) on the old main line of the Birmingham canal, near Smethwick.

The potted version:  This is the last remaining piece of canalside industrial archaelogy in the area, and contractors were poised last week to start demolishing it.  This came as a shock to various local canal luminaries, who immediately protested loudly to the local British Waterways manager, Roger Herrington.  I understand they've also had the local media down, together with a variety of bigwigs, including BW Chairman Robin Evans,

What makes them special?  According to Laurence Hogg on his British Waterways Yahoo Groups list:

The site was abandoned in the 1960's and has had no public access, thus most of the remains are "as is", simply decayed.  Either side of the Hopper are two fully existing inclined planes which appear to the layman to be retailing [sic - retaining?] walls, they may have track in situ as well the wharf itself. This structure is so untouched that there is no graffitti or vandalism on the site.  British Waterways applied for planning permission to demolish the structure following a single ARUP investigation which deemed it as deteriorated and possibly in readiness to collapse. The site has slipped through the listings net!  Where else can you find a canalside loading hopper and wharf so intact?

Waterscape echoed this a year or so back, in a page called 'New life for old mining relics':

British Waterways, Sandwell Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund have proposed a package of improvements for the area worth £1.7 million. Their exciting plans include returning the disused canalside mining shutes to their former functional glory.

The uk.rec.waterways group has been discussing it too, in a thread called 'URGENT: Sandwell Park Colliery loading chute demolition imminent!'.

There is a tendency in these cases for a chorus of damnation to swell up.  People hear the easy half of the story and suddenly they are awash with outrage. I suppose I ought to sing along, if only to give pause to the demolition process while BW explains why it should be demolished and listens to the case against.  Openness is all.

I'd be a lot happier, though, if there was a bit more consideration to creating a happier future with real architecture, rather than just saving ruins.  There are an awful lot of preserved ruins in Britain in the middle of ugly developments, and the whole effect just makes many a heritage ruin look like the capped stump of a rotten tooth in an unwholesome mouth. 

My view on such matters is always: 'What would Brindley have done?' or 'Could Telford have come up with something more awe-inspiring?'  Perhaps a compromise solution would be to knock down this concrete-cancer-ridden structure, the product of municipal depression-era plannners, and rebuild it from scratch in blue brick in a way that Brunel would have approved. It still wouldn't actually do anything, but that's not the point of follies, is it?  Like many a sham ruin it would look a lot nicer and provide us with the shadow of the past that we crave.

If the preservationists want the canals to seem the same they were to the old boatmen, I'd encourage them to restore the old toll houses on the islands on the Main Line.  And to switch the new distance signs to miles and furlongs, the way the boaters of old used to measure it (and the way good old Nick Atty's Canalplan still quixotically does). 

Update:  Loading chute demolition NOT imminent.

Comments

[Richard L]

Local Rag (Express + Star) ran story recently that Coal Chutes due for demolition on 05/06/06. Cycled past today at 1200Hrs - no sign of work beginning. No plant or machinery visible. Story in tonights E + S - work has begun !

It is tragic that this structure is to be lost, however it is my humble opinion that relatively early examples of Reinforced Concrete such as this are almost impossible to save. The problem is that the thickness of concrete covering the reinforcement was very often insufficient. This over time has allowed water to penetrate and corrode the steel; when this happens the resulting expansion causes more of the covering concrete to spall off. It is a vicious circle almost impossible to arrest. Indeed several far more important structures have been lost in the UK, Europe and the US for the same reason - some whilst still in use !

I shall contact the E + S to point out their error.

I shall continue to visit the location as often as I am able and will post again if there are further developments.

Has anyone else seen the Kingfishers there ?

Richard L

[Peter]

I am sympathetic to your views on this matter Andrew.

In 1993, Paul Reas made a series of photographs on the 'Heritage Industry', they were published by Cornerhouse Books, under the title "Flogging a Dead Horse: Heritage Culture and Its Role in Post-industrial Britain", with text by Stuart Cosgrove and Val Williams.

http://www.cornerhouse.org/publications/browse.asp?pid=13&p=2 (see bottom of first page)

The following is from a page on britishcouncil.org (link below) sadly I have not yet been able to find any of the images on the web.

"... Flogging a Dead Horse. 'The title (a regional expression meaning: to try and sell something which has no use: an effort in vain), is a critical view of the Heritage industry. As one of the most marked cultural tendencies of the late eighties and early nineties the emergence of 'the past', as a focus of popular leisure-time consumption, is a major issue in Britain today. A whole diversified industry has arisen to process and market whatever promising bits of raw past suggest themselves for development. As the pace to portrait the past quickens and the industry's growth rate increases, so 'war history, in its museum cases and roped off areas, becomes less adequate at satisfying the appetite of a generation reared on perceptions of reality cut up by television into easily digestible chunks. The tourist of the nineties, with camcorder and auto-focus camera, expects a 'hands-on' experience. But the trouble with Heritage Culture is that the safe inconsequential history it markets doesn't educate, it only sedates its audience. Heritage is meretricious history that never challenges the present. Consumerist history: history for a disposable income. Like a steam train, it takes you on a pleasant ride to nowhere, and then back to where you started.

Documentary Dilemmas Aspects of British Documentary Photography 1983-1993 , The British Council, London 1994"

Thought you might be interested.

Regards

Peter