Industrial Heritage Webinar 5 : Elsecar, Barnsley, South Yorkshire

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:26:04
Speaker 1
Welcome, everybody, to today's Industrial Heritage Webinar. This is the fifth one that we're running. And today we're looking at the Elsecar Heritage Action Zone. And I'm pleased that we've got a number of speakers today. Jane Jackson from Historic England is going to be leading the webinar. We've got John Tanner from Barnsley Council and Dave Went as well from Historic England.

00:00:26:04 - 00:00:47:04
Speaker 1
So it should be a really interesting and informative webinar, as Matt says. The earlier webinars are available to view on the Historic England website, and Matt will put the link to those in the chat shortly. Any comments or questions? Please put them in the chat, but there will be a Q&A at the end, so we'll try and pick them.

00:00:47:05 - 00:01:05:21
Speaker 1
Pick them up, then. We're looking at 40 to 45 minute presentations, so that'll give us about 15 to 10 minutes Q&A at the end. So if you've got any questions, I'd say put them in the chat or we'll pick them up towards the end. We're planning further webinars in in due course, so please look out for those.

00:01:06:14 - 00:01:30:06
Speaker 1
And as Matt said, this will be recorded and will be available on the Historic England website shortly. And if you've got any further thoughts on topics that you'd like to see in future webinars, again, please put those in the chat or raise those at the end and we'll we'll note those down as well. So without further ado, I'll hand over to Jane, who'll start today's webinar.

00:01:30:20 - 00:01:35:04
Speaker 1
Thank you, Jane.

00:01:35:04 - 00:01:53:07
Speaker 2
Thank you, Shane. I think actually we've got a short poll that Matt is going to put in here to find out who has joined us and what your background is. So I'll leave that from Oh, there it goes. So we're very interested in your job role and this is for going to be very helpful for Shane on future webinars.

00:01:53:09 - 00:02:30:24
Speaker 2
So interesting. Here we go. Well, my role here is to thank you for joining us, obviously, and to hear what's happening in Elsecar as a result of the Heritage Action Zone Partnership. And I'm setting the scene and trying not to reveal too much about what is going to follow from my short introduction. So presenters today are all from Elsecar Heritage Action Zone project team and we represent the very many colleagues and stakeholders who contributed to the partnership, took part in the research program, debated development planning and organized and or participated in events and workshops.

00:02:31:17 - 00:02:53:16
Speaker 2
And I'm a principal advisor with Historic England and I was program manager for Elsecar HAZ. HAZ is our shortened version of Heritage Action Zone for the three years we run the program from 2017 to 20 Tegwen Roberts was our eyes, ears and voice on the ground as the project officer working with Barnsley and Historic England in managing our engagement with the local community.

00:02:54:04 - 00:03:25:11
Speaker 2
Unfortunately, Tegwen can't be with us today, but we're hoping to cover a lot of that community engagement and we wish Tegwen well and we hope she’ll join us in future webinars. I'm John Tanner probably doesn't need an introduction for many of you. His John from Barnsley Museums is a strong advocate for industrial heritage and a long time champion for Elsecar. Dave Went manages Historic England's archeological survey and investigation work in the north and east of England and led the Elsecar research program.

00:03:25:11 - 00:03:57:09
Speaker 2
So introducing Heritage Action Zones, we're actually going to focus each focus on different aspects of Elsecar in the program. But just to say a short word about Heritage Action Zones, they're partnerships between Historic England and other bodies; in most instances the local authorities. And their designed, and this is how we launched them in 2017, to unleash the power of heritage and create conditions for economic growth and invigorate old, familiar places that are rich in heritage and full of promise and potential to make them more attractive to residents, tourists, investors and businesses.

00:03:58:03 - 00:04:43:14
Speaker 2
And the program does this through joint working, grant funding and sharing skills and knowledge. And Elsecar is one of the first ten Heritage Action Zones launched across England in 2017 and we partner with Barnsley Museums to realize the potential of the place. So where is Elsecar? For those of you who might not know. It's, let's say, the decision to locate one of Historic England’s first Heritage Action Zone in Elsecar came from discussion with Barnsley Council. Elsecar is located in the Barnsley local authority area to the north of Sheffield and we were concerned about the future of the village and interested in the surrounding land and had questions about the extent to significance of industrial archeological remains

00:04:43:23 - 00:05:24:17
Speaker 2
and also the potential of the local authority owned Heritage Center and workshops to develop a different focus and provide more employment opportunities based on heritage led regeneration. And Elsecar is located in the heart of the Yorkshire coalfield on top of the rich, Barnsley seam and the Fitzwilliam family invested in coal extraction and on manufacture for over 200 years, bringing them great personal wealth and transforming the village through the paternalistic investment, not just in industrial infrastructure, but in the church, school housing, the flour mill, etc. of the coal industry was nationalized in 1947 and the last pits, Elsecar Main, closed in 1983.

00:05:25:02 - 00:05:52:05
Speaker 2
Coal mining ceased to be traditional employment in the area. So our long term aims listed here include opportunities to create jobs and go the conservation of the visitor economy locally. So as I said, the House program had a number of key projects and objectives and the English sorry Historic England led research program was ambitious and extensive, with the aim at that research informed all the other projects.

00:05:52:13 - 00:06:17:16
Speaker 2
Obviously the listing program and review of the existing list of buildings of special architectural historic interest, but also using the power of research to inform the future use and management of the different buildings and sites, as well as new development. And this was a very important planned outcome from the HAZ program. So just a little bit more about Elsecar to familiarize yourself with the place, what you're going to see. I'm going to try and use the pointer. we have down here, the Earls Yards, which was the focus for the workshops on the different industries that were developed in Elsecar over those 200 years from the mid 18th century. Coming up here, you see the line of the canal again, instigated by the Fitzwilliam family in the 1790s and superseded by the railway coming in here to the Earls owned railway station in the workshops.

00:06:56:16 - 00:07:42:05
Speaker 2
Quite interesting that. This is probably the 1890 sees the industrial infrastructure fully developed and you can also see some of the terraced housing here, here and up here and links to other industrial sites, the incline plane coming down to the canal and then the Railway. Hemming Field Colliery, which isn't on here, is up here. And I think what's important from this, as you familiarize yourself with the kind of shape of the workshops and location of these different buildings and industries around the village. And here we have Elsecar as it was at the time of the start of the Heritage Action Zone.

00:07:42:05 - 00:08:31:09
Speaker 2
Again you can see that shape the workshops. The line of the workshops here. Elsecar iron works hidden under the canopy up here, but with the original rolling mill building here and those areas of worker housing up here and here. I'm going to pass to John and I think we have another poll which is asking you about Elsecar itself.

00:08:31:09 - 00:08:36:11
Speaker 1
That's pretty much a 50/50 split right there, isn't it, Jane?

00:08:36:11 - 00:08:54:18
Speaker 2
Now, it's just interesting to know that, because obviously we want people to visit and we want them to hear more about how fantastic it is, make them want to visit. And I think John is going to explain more about what Elsecar was like before the Heritage Action Zone and why we thought there was potential to move things along with the Heritage Action Zone.

00:08:54:18 - 00:08:56:04
Speaker 2
So I'll pass over to John Tanner.

00:08:57:01 - 00:09:26:01
Speaker 3
That's great. Thank you, Jane. And a big thank you to everybody for the invitation to speak today and see Historic England much more widely for all the work and contributions through the Heritage Action Zone and before and since as well, it really has been transformational for us. And a big shout out to Tegwen who's already been mentioned who was our project project manager on the ground at Elsecar who’s been utterly incredible, unfortunately today to present the her role was absolutely crucial for us.

00:09:26:09 - 00:09:43:23
Speaker 3
So if I may, I'm going to leave talking about the kind of the history and heritage of Elsecar today. We're going to speak in a minute. But what I'll do, if I may kind of piece together, we'll fill in the pieces of that story between the end of the cold era in Elsecar and the Heritage Action Zone.

00:09:43:23 - 00:10:21:24
Speaker 3
Elsecar is a fascinating place as Dave will talk about, I'm hoping the last colliery in Elsecar, Maine colliery closed in October 1983. So just a few months before the miners strike. And the strike was actually sparked, it caught on with a colliery, which was just a mile or so down the canal from us. And where a lot of our miners have gone to work since the closure of Elsecar. The colliery was closed and then the colliery workshops were closed in the early nineties after a lot of uncertainty about the future, the workshops and the core of the village, the colliery was absolutely demolished, leaving hardly trace but the workshops in centre of the Village,

00:10:22:04 - 00:10:49:03
Speaker 3
transformed to give it a new future. And I'm given the umbrella title of Heritage Centre, which was and is still slightly confusing, and there were some absolutely astonishing achievements back in the 1990. These workshops were saved and subject to a massive conservation program much more widely than that. Parts of the canal were restored, footpaths reinstated, archaeological sites started to be identified and a huge variety of community mobilization.

00:10:50:13 - 00:11:18:11
Speaker 3
But it did face some really serious difficulties as a destination almost immediately, which got worse in the early 2000. As I'll come back to in a moment, these are kind of easy to do. You can spot them with hindsight, but they certainly shouldn't be seen as criticism of those involved. At the time, increase in South Yorkshire was not an easy place to launch with this nation in the nineties amidst the devastating socio-economic impacts of pit closures.

00:11:19:04 - 00:11:44:22
Speaker 3
And it still isn't an obvious tourism hot spot today, but it's changing very radically, particularly relevant to what we're talking about today. There just wasn't a full kind of compelling understanding of exactly what Elsecar’s heritage was what the place is, what the heritage of the place was, what was Elsecar. And without that compelling sense of what is this place, what is this place underpinned with in kind of destination terms?

00:11:45:02 - 00:12:06:04
Speaker 3
This is what this place is. This is what you were meant to do to come here. This is what you’re meant do when you arrive without those things, it was always going to struggle to break into new markets and attract visitors and what have you. And that became apparent very, very quickly. So by the early 2000, Elsecar was certainly experiencing some really very severe challenges.

00:12:06:19 - 00:12:34:11
Speaker 3
Footfall was low and it was decreasing. There wasn't a visitor center. There was no people welcomed, welcomes. I mean, there was two, possibly three interpretation panels left from the mid nineties, but they were too faded to be able to read. There were quite a few empty retail units, that the workshops have become a mainly retail offer and there was an eclectic and balanced and inclusive is the experience across the board and somewhat symbolically faced with decreasing visitor numbers, the need to make money.

00:12:34:11 - 00:13:03:23
Speaker 3
A small, basic museum that had been created the nineties was closed down and was turned into a commercial nursery. The large hands on indoor science park is supplied by food, signed, was closed down and turned into a commercial indoor space. But it was it was in something of a downward spiral. So the situation had changed considerably since some sequester in recent years, triggered in the first instance by a very special engine of the one that you can see that you can mention elsewhere is now recognized to be the world's oldest steam engine in situ anywhere in the world.

00:13:04:06 - 00:13:34:23
Speaker 3
And the only new convention that's still in situ and you are still in commerce like the old can you colliery in 1794, 95, back in around 2010, it was placed by Neil Cousins on the list of most at risk industrial heritage sites in the UK. And all of us who were involved at that time are still extremely proud of the rescue and restoration of the engine that followed completed in 2014, thanks to support and funding from Historic England, the National Lottery Fund and Barnsley Council and you can watch the film online all the way through.

00:13:35:12 - 00:13:58:04
Speaker 3
Now thousands visit and enjoy tours each year. But I don't think any of us suspects that that time that what was already well known about this kind of industrial archaeology and heritage circles has been a real jewel in the crown of the UK industry archaeology was also set in a really very particularly extraordinary local crown of industrial and wider heritage.

00:13:58:04 - 00:14:19:11
Speaker 3
So alongside of that restoration you can mention, because we had a very small amount of cash to replace these faded interpretation panels, volunteers and local students started to look at the volunteer research that we'd done in the 1990s. They started to piece together the stories of the village and some of the revelations about what happened to. I can still remember a couple of kind of key moments, key kind of comments that people made.

00:14:19:20 - 00:14:41:14
Speaker 3
Somebody said, Oh, wasn't a bit of the title. So about these old Fitzwilliams as a throwaway common and a man stood with a brilliant John Roger from an oven on his first visit to city. And we were staring at this kind of extended hillock that was covered in trees at the time, thinking this could be a bit similar to the bustle that, you know, you've got John up pulling up.

00:14:42:01 - 00:15:04:13
Speaker 3
There's a collaborative PhD which I think Matt is going to post in the chat by Nigel Cavennah which starting to explore the experiences on the ground from below in the mines in the late 18th and early 19th. But there was still a massive task that was left, a fundamental one, which was to understand actually what was the Elsecar what was the place all about, what is the place all about?

00:15:04:13 - 00:15:22:05
Speaker 3
What is its heritage, its landscape, its archaeology stories? We were starting to get glimpses, but what we just didn't know is fundamentally, what is this place? How should we understand it? And also, even more crucially, once we do get that fundamental understanding of what the place is, what the heck could we do with it, what is its potential?

00:15:22:10 - 00:15:33:01
Speaker 3
And that's where a certain Heritage Action Zone kicks in, and which Dave’s now going to tell you more about.

00:15:33:01 - 00:15:57:15
Speaker 4
Right. Good afternoon, everybody. Dave Went here from Historic England. I was the the lead on the research project to look at the Heritage Action Zone for Elsecar between 2017 and 2019. So picking up where John was left off, so I'm going to have a quick romp through some of the highlights of Elsecar’s heritage. And just start with the thing.

00:15:57:15 - 00:16:57:19
Speaker 4
Why is Elsecar so important in terms of its industrial history and archaeology? I mean, it's not unusual for great landowners to involve themselves in the industry on that land; Duke of Bridgwater, Duke of Beaufort and so forth. But here there's something different, something more involved, something a bit more intimate and I think a bit more expressive and for that reason, we decided very early on to look beyond the core of the activity around the Elsecar Heritage Center and to take in the landscape around it and the village that was dependent upon it evolved along side of it, hence the little inset map there, which shows you eight character zones radiating out from the yellowy area of

00:16:57:19 - 00:17:25:16
Speaker 4
the core of the village in the center, each of which has a different part to play it in telling the story of the evolution of Elsecar in that landscape. So moving on, I mean, where does it all? It kicks off with this chap, the Charles second Marquess of Rockingham, who was really the person who began the direct involvement between the Fitzwilliam family and the industrial enterprises of that land.

00:17:26:07 - 00:17:59:11
Speaker 4
His father, Thomas, the first Marquess, had carried out the major transformations at Wentworth Woodhouse from the 1720s onwards, taking it from a Jacobean mansion into this baroque and Palladian behemoth of a thing, which I'll show you a picture of in a minute. Employing Henry Flitcroft as the principal architect, Charles taking over employs John Carr, notable architect to add wings at the stable block provide eye catchers across the landscape, including Keppel’s column and the stand and one or two others.

00:17:59:18 - 00:18:31:22
Speaker 4
So he's designing a whole landscape, referential landscape around the around the ground house. Now, Charles is a very prominent Whig politician. He's twice prime minister. He's one of the richest people in the country at the time. A lot of that wealth coming from capitalizing on the Barnsley coal seam which runs underneath the estate and was being dug into by lots of people under small licenses and leases, but many other landowning incomes as well.

00:18:31:22 - 00:18:58:02
Speaker 4
The big change comes here with this. This is the sinking of the King William Pit, around about 1750, originally leased out as all these things were this case to Richard Bingley a local collier to work. But Bingley goes under and the Marquis takes over the enterprise directly and brings it into the management of the estate. This is a little odd, even by the standards of the time, but he's obviously very keen on this.

00:18:58:15 - 00:19:35:08
Speaker 4
This colliery head isn't hidden away. It's actually on the skyline visible like a almost like another eye catcher from Wentworth Woodhouse. And this George Stubbs painting shows that Colliery Head with what is probably Thomas Smith, the estate overseer, in his livery on horseback, striding towards it. And here is if I can certainly if I can start my point here is Wentworth Woodhouse probably the longest single facade of any privately owned country house in the UK.

00:19:36:04 - 00:20:12:00
Speaker 4
Here is the village, the estate. That is the one you'd expect to sit alongside a large country house in this design landscape. Elsecar is off over here, not just out of sight on this shot, really, but this King William Pit, is sitting on this low horizon with Hoyland in the background, clearly visible across the estate landscape. So the second Marques kicks off the interest and it develops and it really develops under his successor, which is William Fourth, Earl Fitzwilliam, who takes over in 1782.

00:20:12:00 - 00:20:39:24
Speaker 4
And then you get a sort of big bang thing going on here from that sort of point onwards. There's the King William Pit shining in in red there. In 1794, they lease a part of the landscape to a ironworks, becomes known as Elsecar iron works. It's run by the Darwin Company from Sheffield. They're looking at using the Iron Stone, which is available just off to the west of this map extractor.

00:20:39:24 - 00:21:10:22
Speaker 4
Tankersley And of course the abandoned coal supplies to develop the iron industry. But the new colliery goes in there by, as you mentioned before, with the new coal and start engine 1795. And this is all tied up with the introduction of the third and fourth canal, which opens in 1798. You can see the you can see the the reservoir for it at the bottom of the slide a the line of it going off to the right that takes you through into the river system, ultimately out to the ports at Hull.

00:21:10:22 - 00:21:47:20
Speaker 4
And there you can take your coal and your other products to the world really. Milton Ironworks. Second Ironworks was established in 1799. This is with Walkers of Rotherham as the first tenant. But both of these ironworks go through phases where they are owned and run directly by the Fitzwilliam family before they eventually settle down in the hands of the Dawes Brothers much later in the 19th century, Milton Ironworks is connected by this by this incline plane running down here to the originally to the to the to the canal network.

00:21:47:21 - 00:22:14:11
Speaker 4
Later on, of course, it becomes the link to the railways Hemming field colliery just to the off on the edge of this map. I'm afraid comes in in 1845. That is probably that definitely has the best top workings of any industrial any colliery buildings around this area. And it's been wonderfully looked after and investigated by the Hemming Field Local History Society Group in 1850.

00:22:14:12 - 00:22:36:20
Speaker 4
The South Yorkshire Railway is brought in and these things don't just happen. This is very much at the instigation of the Fitzwilliam family who sit on these boards and drive these things forward. The Earls workshops are brought in down here around 1850 to consolidate all these ancillary works that are necessary for the collieries. And of course, they're using materials from the ironworks as well.

00:22:37:02 - 00:23:04:23
Speaker 4
So it's a centralized process really. Simon Wood Colliery goes in in 1852 to another Colliery I mean, all of these are basically tapping the lower levels of the Barnsley Seam as it declines and as they're able to pump the water out using the need for an engine so they can actually work these levels. And so in the core of this developing landscape, you have the the Earls Workshops.

00:23:05:05 - 00:23:33:04
Speaker 4
This is this combination of buildings which represents the heart of the industrial enterprise that's going on here. Just quickly looking across these slides, bottom left, you've got the Newcomen style engine house there with the some of the head workings for the new colliery. There's the fittings shop next to it, the nature known as the Carpenter's Workshop, Boiler Repair Shop with the sun, engine house and chimney and so forth behind here as well.

00:23:33:04 - 00:24:00:16
Speaker 4
The Earls, the later Earls, Earls Railway Station, which is a remarkable thing to put within an industrial complex like this. It really was his gateway in and out of the works, which was used with his private train to take his guests to and fro to the races and all sorts of things. So this is very much showing off his involvement with his property and his enterprises over here, top left looking a bit in the distance.

00:24:00:16 - 00:24:25:14
Speaker 4
You can see a strange gable building there. That's a casting shed for the Ironworks and they see a little bit of the rolling mill here, much better in the central picture here where it's now. Of course, the arcades have been filled in with stonework, but this was an open sided rolling mill built in the 1850s and in its time one of the most advanced operations of its type in the country.

00:24:25:14 - 00:24:44:13
Speaker 4
This, of course, relates to the ironworks rather than to the workshops themselves. So the two things are cheek by jowl and it’s the Elscar ironworks I want to look at this one to look at briefly. Next, as Jane mentioned earlier, it really is underneath a canopy of trees. And you had to really know there was something in that. It recognized that there was something interesting going on.

00:24:45:12 - 00:25:18:20
Speaker 4
I spent a lot of time in this woodland and also talking to local people who were very familiar with what was surviving it. And the survival is quite remarkable what you're seeing here. If I use the pointer, that's the rolling mill so that the casting shed survives about there it I superimpose on this hopefully a map of about 1849 on the cusp of when the earl was about to set the lease going again with the Doors brothers from Rumford because a lot of this still survives within the woodland.

00:25:19:14 - 00:25:50:01
Speaker 4
Just looking at some of the key elements here, the you've got the charge bank here where all the materials are laid out in order to supply the blast furnaces. You got an array of three blast furnaces along the bottom here with a blowing engine at the top at this stage, still blowing for cold blast. I think up on the hillside you've got ponds which were obviously to feed the various engines, a small winding engine and warehouse here linked to an inclined plane, bringing the materials up onto the charge bank.

00:25:50:12 - 00:26:12:12
Speaker 4
And it's here on this face here that you've got that massive stonework which reminded people of the plant often works and there are distinct similarities. Down below there was a whole cluster of things finery, kilns, puddling furnaces, all the rest of it, all things you might expect. And so digging into this part of Elsecar it really was like sort of cutting through the jungle to find things at this stage.

00:26:12:12 - 00:26:46:15
Speaker 4
I move to next slide. You see some of the the wealth of material that's actually surviving their top left here. This is part of that mass bank that holds back the charging yard, which bridged to bring the charges across and into the into the the blast furnaces. The right hand image here at the top is the interior of the later blowing house engine put at the other end of the boiler of the furnace array, probably in the 1860s, when the whole thing was converted to a hot blower system under the Doors Brothers.

00:26:47:07 - 00:27:15:10
Speaker 4
And then here, running along the foot of that charging bank Revetment coming down into the yard area of the current workshops, this wonderful array of passageways which have survived, which sat behind the blast furnaces for in this arrangement, possibly another one. But I think four was the maximum they had the blue and these are the I, I struggle with the pronouncing action of this, but the tears, the for the pipework, for the blowing pipes, everything else.

00:27:16:02 - 00:27:38:18
Speaker 4
And this is the area which is now being consolidated thanks to groundwork and is being looked at in terms of future display and things that John may speak about in a minute. Milton works up on the hillside above named for the Viscount Milton, who was the heir apparent to the Fitzwilliam title. There's much less to see at that now than there has been in the past.

00:27:38:18 - 00:28:01:18
Speaker 4
It's effectively a lot of it's levelled, filled in, turned over at one stage as a corporation rubbish dump and then subsequently landscape up to for recreation space. So what you see now is a lot of playing fields and a couple of big supply ponds out here on the right, left side of the road. Again, however, if I put on oh that.

00:28:01:18 - 00:28:40:13
Speaker 4
So that's a, a picture of what it looked like about 18, 1911 when the area was being used as a rifle range for territorial. And there's just one brass foundry surviving here, which is somewhere just off the picture about that at the time subsequently gone. If I do the same thing I bring in the so Dawes period lease picture you can see how complicated and dense this is this is some of the large supply ponds and probably providing motive power as well, arrayed along here, taking tapping a stream that runs off to the to the west.

00:28:40:13 - 00:29:06:24
Speaker 4
Deep in the core of this, there is one blast furnace showing at the time. We think there were actually two, but one was presumably out of action when they were drawing this plan up. And a vast array of other ancillary refining and puddling furnaces and casting sheds and workshops because this works, produced a tremendous amount of material. They were specifically noted for their production of bridge elements.

00:29:08:00 - 00:29:34:01
Speaker 4
Remi's Southwark Bridge 1811, was cast here and taken off the site. A great procession. Later on the suspension bridge elements cast here for Mark Brunel, who took them off and stored them on the ill the pool on Reunion Island. And this is one of the things I am known for, but they were engine builders, all sorts of things in their time.

00:29:34:01 - 00:29:58:04
Speaker 4
So we we can't see much of that site now. But what we did do as part of the Heritage Action Zone is use our own internal geophysics team to do magnetometer and ground penetrating radar across the site, which gave us an incredible image of the density of archeological remains still surviving. Obviously, you trying to magnatometry on what is effectively 100 years worth of Ironworks.

00:29:58:04 - 00:30:22:05
Speaker 4
It's going to be quite difficult to pick the bones out of that, but there are some quite clearly defined areas of particular interest and as well as potential features which we can relate back to historic maps. But we're particularly interested in this area here which look like either the charging bay or perhaps some coke, coke ovens or something like that because of the intensity of the heat.

00:30:22:05 - 00:30:46:20
Speaker 4
And that was certainly looked at a bit later in the project. So I'll come back to that briefly later to try and establish exactly what was going on there. So that's the sort of industrial core things, but there's a lot more going on besides. And that's the thing I just want to move on to briefly the development of the village alongside the industrial works.

00:30:46:20 - 00:31:12:23
Speaker 4
These are estate cottages built for Colliers around about 1800 a few years before. In the case of Skiers Hall cottages, they built by the estate by the Earl Fitzwilliam to go alongside the the collieries that he himself was controlling. Now they are elaborate, to say the least we're talking about here cruise and cemetery and small sort of echoes of classical design coming in here.

00:31:12:23 - 00:31:40:19
Speaker 4
And that's not surprising because they are effectively being built at the same time as other estate cottages are being built in the more traditional estate village area up on the hill that designs by John Carr. We have a direct link that you can see the connection and these are substantial, spacious accommodations a little beyond what you might expect to find in a South Yorkshire coalfield housing area.

00:31:41:19 - 00:32:05:19
Speaker 4
And this continues even even the rows within the center of the village, which are somewhat less elaborate in terms of their overall design, are still very spacious with equipped with allotments and yards and so forth. There's a heavy paternalistic element here which is echoing the same architecture and the same philosophy that's being applied in the domestic village at Wentworth itself.

00:32:06:09 - 00:32:34:20
Speaker 4
And some of the design cues read across as well. The lintels on these rows exactly the same as you find up in the Wentworth Village with solid lintels inscribed to look as though they are sort of radiating loose walls and that sort of thing. And some of the houses are posher still. This is Skier Spring lodge built in 1834 for one of the Graham's who ran the Milton Ironworks at the time slightly.

00:32:34:20 - 00:33:08:05
Speaker 4
Italianate, in an aspect, stares directly across the valley towards Wentworth Woodhouse itself. And it was obviously designed to be a visible and into visible for that purpose. What I particularly like about this, and it's a bit of an aside, is that the where the camera is standing, taking this photograph is basically in a ha ha that defined the the garden in front of the house, the retaining wall of the car of the hall is almost entirely composed of furnace slag, which is unusual in any sort of country.

00:33:08:05 - 00:33:33:00
Speaker 4
House context. For the workers at the ironworks there was provision of good housing as well. This these are a few of the surviving back to backs again back to back housing scheme. It would usually be associated with areas of deprivation, but in this case they are large, they are airy, they were put to gardens and so forth. Again, very much the guiding hands of the Earl.

00:33:34:15 - 00:34:03:09
Speaker 4
More traditionally, of course, for a paternalistic landlord, this the Holy Trinity Church. But in the 1841, alongside the school, which is run alongside it, very much counterbalancing the rise in nonconformist chapels in the area around that time. Then a late Colliers Terrace. Believe it or not, this is a row of Colliers houses with a certain amount of social stratification within it, depending what jobs people had.

00:34:03:16 - 00:34:29:09
Speaker 4
But again, clearly estate architecture, a slight classical illusion. Oculus Windows, you know, symmetry and so forth. And perhaps the crowning example of this sort of thing, the Fitzwilliam Lodge of 1853, similar sort of design features, entirely dedicated for the use of miners who would otherwise have to travel to far from their home villages in order to put in the weeks work.

00:34:29:10 - 00:35:14:19
Speaker 4
It's a miner's lodging house, in effect, but look at it know it's clearly designed to project something more than just its function. This interest in housing continues until the early 20th century. This is about 1911 where the the the housing is now somewhat under the control of the unit of the the district council. But It's also using the using the skills of the estates of an architect, Herbert Smith, to produce something that is obviously copying ideas and designs from Welwyn Garden City or Letchworth at the time, a new model, village type approach.

00:35:15:06 - 00:35:50:01
Speaker 4
Again, very generous housing in this particular case, intended very much to attract bodies of miners southwards from the Scottish coalfields in order to meet the supply for skilled labor in the area. And this is part of the varied and extraordinary character of Elsecar these different phases washed up against each other and show the development of the of the village alongside the ironworks, which disappeared in the 1880s, and the collieries which continued and even continued as far as our characterization of the area into the postwar period immediately.

00:35:50:01 - 00:36:24:06
Speaker 4
Well, obviously, this is the point at which the collieries and that is arrested away from the Fitzwilliams and goes into the National Coal Board. But there are significant problems still providing housing for the miners. And you've also got the postwar problems of a lack of bricks and skilled brick workers. And so they're introducing a system built, prefabricated, reinforced concrete buildings such as these Wates houses, not particularly lovely form of accommodation, but they are characteristic of the area becoming rarer.

00:36:24:15 - 00:36:48:21
Speaker 4
And I still have historical interest, I would say social and otherwise. So that's a quick snapshot of the development of the industry alongside the housing within the area. I'll just say a few things which relate more to sort of tech wins. Area of things are with the community. That was constant throughout the time that me and my small team were working in the area.

00:36:48:21 - 00:37:16:10
Speaker 4
We were obviously a team of architectural historians and archeologists nosing around the landscape, knocking on doors, asking people about things. So it was a constant form of interaction with locals who knew more about the sites, the places that we did that. A tremendous amount of we were very polite, very welcome. But on occasion, we also invested time in some specific bits of work which could generate a bit more particular community engagement.

00:37:16:12 - 00:37:38:16
Speaker 4
This is one case in point. Back in 2017, we thought we'd have a look at the shape of the canal, which had been infilled to allow the railway sidings to develop. In the 1860s. They retracted the canal head northwards a few hundred yards, filled in the canal bed to the south, covered it with railway sidings and so forth, and we're keen to see where it survived.

00:37:38:16 - 00:38:10:24
Speaker 4
It would have been underneath this sort of ash corridor here, in fact. But turn on the map of about 1850, you can still see it. So there's the sock end of the canal. What we're interested in is whether anything of the architecture survived, what sort of depth survive, how they built it and so forth. So we did the obvious thing with a team from Reading University and put two lines of coring borehole samples across it to try and get the profile to get something of the content.

00:38:10:24 - 00:38:38:05
Speaker 4
This was seemed quite a good idea at the time. What it actually revealed was a well, predictable, huge amount of the sort of waste that you might expect to find sitting around several collieries and several ironworks. So it was massively infilled with brick, slag, ash, all sorts of toxic hydrocarbons and everything else. So naturally what we did that is invite all the schoolchildren to come down to have a look at it, which they found tremendously interesting.

00:38:38:12 - 00:39:13:14
Speaker 4
The youngest found this sort of process at the digger and the frustrated scientists breaking their coring devices every time they encountered furnace slag as part of the film and so on. But it was enjoyable. It was interactive. We did find the base of the canal about three meters down, puddle Clay and so forth. We also found, you know, an array of fairly obvious bits of industrial detritus, artefacts, bolts, washers, pottery and so forth, which the children were very keen to take away once it was clean, and try and understand something of the things that were thrown away and incorporated.

00:39:14:12 - 00:39:43:06
Speaker 4
The vague idea we had briefly of them reinstating the canal swiftly abandoned when we realised we were dealing with about 4000 cubic meters of highly toxic waste, which nobody really wanted to see. Up on Milton, which I mentioned earlier, in the summer of 2018, there was a large community excavation run by Barnsley Museum Art Heritage with support from the Wentworth Great Places project as well.

00:39:43:23 - 00:40:06:11
Speaker 4
This opened up that angry Red area that we'd seen on the geophysics and revealed not a bunch of coking ovens, which we expected, but calcite in kilns and very early ones. We think these are actually relate to the Walker industry period 1799 to 1750, 1815 or thereabouts, in which case they may be the earliest ones known in the region, possibly wider.

00:40:06:18 - 00:40:52:08
Speaker 4
Still, about 100 members of the community took here 55 children in different schools. Huge numbers of visitors came by there were artist projects. It was built from it as well, and the engagement was just tremendous and largely down to the efforts of Tegwen Roberts, the HAZ principal. In 2019, they transferred these efforts into the engine boiler yard next to the Newcomen style engine house, which was sort of unfinished business from ten years or more before, because the house seen a lot of work, the boiler, the engine has seen a lot of work, the boiler area had just been sort of concreted over and I've answered questions about what sort of boilers might have been there. Obviously haystack boilers early on, Lancashire boilers later on. Tegwen and her group engaged the schoolchildren to try to figure out from the documents what they thought might be there and they sketched out in real sizes in the workshop yards and then all sorts of people came together as a community. Take volunteers from the hemming filled group, school parties, others over a few weeks and revealed that a substantial amount of the brickwork and stonework for the last set of Lancashire boilers was still there, together with stoking holes, grates and so forth.

00:41:31:06 - 00:41:49:05
Speaker 4
And the the amount of visitors, the amount of social media that was spun off of it and all the rest of it was just hugely engaging and absolutely wonderful. So that sort of pretty much brings me to the end of a quick whistle stop tour. So it's a little too long. It's there's a lot more we could say about Elsecar

00:41:49:05 - 00:42:09:11
Speaker 4
And if you click on that link or follow Historic England's website to that research report, just type in Elsecar in research report, you'll find it. You get a tremendous amount of information in our research report, which is entirely free. And on that point, I will pass on to my next colleague. Thanks very much.

00:42:11:03 - 00:42:37:00
Speaker 2
Hello again. I'm now picking up from Dave. The research report was published online in late 2019, but these images from the formal launch in the village of the research in February 2020 and I don't want to embarrass anybody too much, but the pictured out push them bottom. Right? We were having such fun talking to people and sharing what's going on and we've got a colleague, Lucy, in between me and Dave that 70 residents came out on a damp February evening.

00:42:37:00 - 00:43:08:03
Speaker 2
Many of them have been engaged in digs or come to Heritage Action Zone or museum events. So they were there was a growing body of people who wanted to know more about the village and wanted to get involved. They read which view not just information about the research program, but plans and drawings held by Barnsley archives to form miners brought along various elements memorabilia, not just the miners lamps, miner's tokens, but interesting leaflets like the one from the early 1960s at really different time.

00:43:08:03 - 00:43:33:08
Speaker 2
Opportunities for boys in coal mining. But for the Heritage Action Zone program, the research was an incredible tool to inform the other projects that we were developing and future decisions about Elsecar. So obvious one would obviously be the review of listing the site, studying volume of information and evidence added greatly to significance and understanding of the buildings and places in the village.

00:43:34:07 - 00:43:59:19
Speaker 2
We had a phenomenal number of new listings and I'm just picking up on a few of them here. Try and use the point to what we have here. Just here is that furnace back covered, formerly covered with all the vegetation which Heritage Action Zone project was able to clear in 2018 to allow the programmatic survey and further explorations of the industrial archaeology.

00:44:00:01 - 00:44:28:21
Speaker 2
I can't pronounce either passages which you can just see down here and on the bottom right. We have a picture of Hemming Field. Colliery doesn't really show the extent of the site, but friends of Hemming Felt are now managing this and gradually opening it up to more visitors and interpretation and making the site presentable and accessible and top right.

00:44:29:00 - 00:44:58:00
Speaker 2
We're inside the sales yards. Again, a lot of these buildings, 19th century buildings, were newly listed at two star or upgraded to two star, which is quite an accolade. We see the Earls Railway Station again up here with the entrance where the railway came into the yards and the adjacent former offices, cottages on the right or to star on replacing probably earlier terraced housing which would have been single storey, single width depth.

00:44:59:14 - 00:45:42:06
Speaker 2
These are just examples of the listing review. But moving on, there, the research contributed greatly to our understanding of many buildings and structures, though integral to the story, of Elsecar’s industrial development and important village history were too altered to be listed and protected using the national criteria by which buildings are identified and taken forward. Recommendations and what we did was as part of Historic Area Assessment and program, we actually produced a summary report which based on the research, looking at the character areas and buildings that we knew might not make it into the main listing program.

00:45:42:14 - 00:46:20:02
Speaker 2
And the example here is those rural back to back houses. I'm and there were, I think probably about 20 or 30 structures, places that were included in this summary. And this report was used for community discussions about Elsecar’s past and future and about the buildings and places people valued locally. From this, a local list of what we call in planning terms on listed heritage assets was adopted by Barnsley Council in May 2020, and this local list is now a material consideration in making decisions is the planning process and Historic.

00:46:20:02 - 00:46:48:09
Speaker 2
England has guidance on our website and advice note on how local lists are created. And it's something that is really important for engaging people in their local heritage and understanding what's valued. And of course, we also had that ambition for improved and informed change management. So understanding of the significance the village, coupled with our knowledge of the origins, construction and use of so many buildings, resulted in some fairly immediate guidance documents.

00:46:48:19 - 00:47:16:04
Speaker 2
So there was a new conservation area appraisal. And what you see here, a design, a maintenance guide which was developed by Tegwen along with Barnsley Council Conservation and Planning Officers. Now this guidance was adopted to supplement planning guidance, the local plan. So again that gives it status within the planning system. And I'm just going to say up here on the top right we have Old Row; some of these more simple terraced houses.

00:47:16:14 - 00:47:53:01
Speaker 2
Just quickly, I'll say it shows some of the disadvantages of that sandstone carboniferous sandstone layer, which is very soft and susceptible to water erosion. At the bottom cop car terrace, that example of a different standard and scale of housing. Other design work led by Historic England included draft proposals for retrofit of some of the former industrial buildings owned by Barnsley Council site based analysis and outline briefs for infill housing sites in the village to reflect more traditional housing designs and facilitated workshops around the future direction of growth.

00:47:53:01 - 00:48:21:06
Speaker 2
And really what we come down to is what can you achieve in three years, you know? And so we did recognize some tangible outputs which are listed here. So those listings, the planning gains and we had numbers of people who attended events, volunteered during the HAZ three years 2017 to 2020 But had we measured the legacy of the House partnership and elsewhere with the community in transition?

00:48:21:09 - 00:48:44:22
Speaker 2
The residents remember the coal mines, National Coal Board but increasing number of people moving in who were just drawn by the green natural environment and attractive housing and proximity to the M1. So you know, we were really we need to once has the has changed the future trajectory of growth at the village and can the understanding of significant role played in the past make a real difference to this community?

00:48:45:14 - 00:49:24:18
Speaker 2
But before I pass on to John about what happens next is a review, reflections on lessons learned perhaps for Historic England and various time limited projects. So what worked well, and we got to highlight the project team, great project team, everybody involved and engaged, interested, enthusiastic, talking to colleagues, talking to local residents, talking to visitors about what a fabulous place it was and what were we developing, having Tegwen place locally, focused on, engage with the community was incredibly important and you could see Tegwen in the bottom right down here.

00:49:26:01 - 00:50:04:05
Speaker 2
Yeah talking at one of these local events and just really being there and enthusiastic about elsewhere. It was a very limited financial resource put in funding the project officer, some small grants towards understanding condition of say for example the mining had stocks carrying out work to furnace bank main input staff time, which obviously was quite extensive but incredibly important and a very big impact came from sharing the research and understanding from early on.

00:50:04:18 - 00:50:35:04
Speaker 2
So there were events not just when we published research, but through the as firm findings and things being developed through walk arounds. There was a great lot of engagement, not just through the organized digs, but just people talking to people in the community. So the ambitions we had to take a hit from events in 2020, almost as soon as the research was launched and Elsecar became inaccessible because the pandemic meetings and online all the best laid plans had to be rethought.

00:50:35:18 - 00:50:46:14
Speaker 2
But our partners Barnsley museums, Barnsley Planning Department didn't stand still. And John Tanner is going to tell you what happened next.

00:50:46:14 - 00:51:03:19
Speaker 3
Thank you, Jane. I will. I'll definitely these slides because we were up against it. We've got a short film to show people at the end as well. I think for are certainly certainly a new drawing and a real new impetus among project teams around the organizations and partners about what else you can achieve. And a lot of pride as well.

00:51:04:03 - 00:51:24:20
Speaker 3
In the village. Some of that is kind of reflected in that huge mirror mural at the top, which we consulted on to people, came to presentations, look at another idea is to come across wonderfully, really got a couple of dissenting voices that is on a 1950s building which had been reclad in the seventies. It's in a horrible state that mural.

00:51:24:21 - 00:51:47:24
Speaker 3
It's been wonderfully received and simply the digital reconstructions which we're going to play at the end, which you can see is still from there as well, really reflects how things have come together. And that's put together with local volunteers, local community groups, national experts and support, including from Historic England. We put together new perspectives about what else to which are about stock consulting public will on the back of a 100 on survey last summer.

00:51:48:00 - 00:52:09:04
Speaker 3
Local consultation events and all of that really is underpinned by a radical new, different understanding about what Elsecar is. And a lot of that really just still needs to be shared on the ground. If you go there, it still doesn't really make sense. We haven't really started rolling a lot of this stuff out, so we've done in partnership with local

00:52:09:04 - 00:52:27:17
Speaker 3
community groups have put the new interpretation panels across the landscape, but what this speaks to how things are going to be transformed in years to come. Similarly, some fantastic targets of community engagement through the Heritage Action Zone. Now, what we're firmly serving to do is extend that into making sure the local community can take the lead more generally going forward.

00:52:27:23 - 00:52:52:00
Speaker 3
So we've new to stakeholder group starting next month hard hat towards local starting at exciting months connectivity projects including around the 200th anniversary of those bridges that were made for Mark B being erected locally to be tested before they were shipped over to the Indian Ocean. And we hope thousands were going to come and see them again as they did back in the 1820s.

00:52:52:00 - 00:53:09:02
Speaker 3
In terms of the visitor experience might be rough around the edges, but in terms of the viability of Elsecar’s current success, the business notion, this seems to have been a massive turnaround this year is going to be by far our strongest year ever with well over 500,000 people visiting. That's just the core site and it's probably a significant underestimate.

00:53:09:10 - 00:53:35:19
Speaker 3
It doesn't include visitors to the part. The Canal Heritage Railway has been closed for two and a half years, as I mentioned a moment and some big new events like Supper Club, which you can see there in our own works, Rolling Mill are attracting what's typically happens once a month or two days. I'm just over that we can do each month attracts 5 to 10000 people each month who are now grade two star designated in Schedule one, even though I'm rivals as much targets around events, tenancies.

00:53:36:00 - 00:54:00:22
Speaker 3
And we've got a big waiting list of people who want to move their businesses to the site, which is fantastic. We're also one of the projects to get cultural development funding. Last year on this very exciting front comes around not in terms of looking at these historic assets. So we're going to be fully restoring and transforming the old railway station, as is picture Darren and Dave mentioned, and creating eight new crates of workshops and spaces on the top floor.

00:54:02:07 - 00:54:21:10
Speaker 3
We're going to be transforming currently derelict, large, big part of our ironworks, which you see a picture back, which all sound installation last year which went on to be shortlisted for an open another will see really we've also got funding to transform the public realm across the site to build a big new museum gallery to to act as a vista hook to make the whole place make sense.

00:54:21:17 - 00:54:49:22
Speaker 3
And we've also secured funding for a canal towpath for new cycle hire and a new active travel hub. We mentioned the Elsecar ironworks. We've currently got structural engineers, surveys and others looking at those works to come up with options appraisals about how to consolidate and share them. There are lots of up and fascinating sites. Up until the start of the pandemic, it was the site of the Heritage Railway, which run its difficulties at the start of the pandemic and handed the lease back to us.

00:54:49:22 - 00:55:11:11
Speaker 3
Just the ones known about rolling stock, just the land completely the replica Edwardian railway station that you can just see there in that picture which had been built in the nineties before. The significance was understood and we're absolutely determined to reintroduce the Heritage Railway back into Elsecar. We've been working Full Power of Love to figure out how we can do that misuse of corporate street not real determined to do.

00:55:11:16 - 00:55:33:08
Speaker 3
What we also recognise is that when you see the way that it's appropriate, sustainable contributes to what else could come be and opens the astonishing ironworks sites for visitors to explore, to understand, and to maximise the impacts of it. So we look at exciting plans about new engineering workshops, the new opportunities for royal colleges, and a lot more what considerations around it being.

00:55:33:08 - 00:55:59:01
Speaker 3
Sites like Monument Topic July was taken just ten days ago during archaeological testing. I'm going to figure out the archaeology and to figure out the depth and nature of mine workings, etc. on the site. I'm very pleased to reveal, as you can see in that picture, we discovered the original floor column bases and much else of our pulling furnaces which were built circa 1850 and were circa 1885, which is extraordinary.

00:55:59:22 - 00:56:22:05
Speaker 3
The so very finely and I guess ensure looking back before we play out our short film where we can a few years ago there is huge excitement and increased pride about what the village was and what it's going to be now going into the future could not have happened without the kind of transformed understanding of what the village is all about, what the Heritage Action Zone has brought to it that focus.

00:56:23:04 - 00:56:46:20
Speaker 3
Personally, I really don't think that it's led to increased confidence, increase ambition. We understand the heritage we've been able to work with historically to protect it so much. With designated protected conservation areas extended new monument scheduled, it's now understood saved. But I think crucially, it's also much more than that with the summit's potential. We've got big ideas for what it could mean, what else could come be, and crucially, how it can maximise the impact.

00:56:46:20 - 00:57:12:15
Speaker 3
So we started going forward economically, socially, culturally, for Elsecar for the local village and for the communities of South Yorkshire. To be honest, that really is a very exciting time. And now I think about reconstruction elsewhere and I think that was produced using fantastic visual, creative in the Northwest, hallmarks in Moss working historic England, parts from across the UK and also local community volunteers and historians.

00:57:12:22 - 00:57:24:22
Speaker 3
We put it together last year, we launched a few months ago and we hope you like it. I hope you won't do questions for Shane or afterwards, but I think the film is ready to go when you are.

00:57:26:01 - 00:57:35:15
Speaker 1
I think if we if we do the film, no way. John was conscious of time. So if we can put the film on and I think we'll post a wrap up at that point. So yeah, here's the film.

01:02:55:10 - 01:03:24:00
Speaker 1
Great. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for that, John. Again, I'm conscious time is moving on. So do you want to put the last question on Matt? I think that was one more poll we had to put up. And what we'll do, I think, will bring it bring it to a close. They're great great to see the results in the in the poll, I noticed that there was quite a lot of discussion going on with chat and a number of those questions were asked in the chat.

01:03:24:00 - 01:03:56:04
Speaker 1
So that's, that's great. As one of the, one of the discussions mentioned, the video, the recording of the webinar will be on the website in the next week or so. So again, you, you can look at the material that's at your leisure and indeed do make others aware of it who were able to do this today. But my thanks to John, Jane, Dave and indeed Matt for a really good webinar there, which just highlights the tremendous work that's been going on in Elsecar.

01:03:56:17 - 01:04:14:16
Speaker 1
And as John touched on the great ambition in going forward. So thanks again for joining us today. Thanks to all the presenters. Do look out for future webinars in our industrial heritage series as we go forward into the into the year. And I hope to see you again soon. Thanks so much, everybody.