Industrial Heritage

A survey in 2011 found that the percentage of Grade I and II* listed industrial buildings at risk was three times greater than the national average for other types.

Industrial heritage is highly valuable in the UK and once proved integral in the formation of local and national identities. 

Challenges tend to be fiscal, but also access related - we must improve inclusivity of industrial heritage to different age, ethnic and gendered demographics.

Investment in industrial heritage can bring economic, social and environmental benefits. 

Adaptive re-use has saved many redundant industrial buildings.

PREHISTORIC - Flint mines and axe factories 

BRONZE AGE - Copper mining and tin extraction

ROMAN - Metal ore extraction, smelting, pottery production, brick and tile production, stone quarrying

ANGLO-SAXON/SCANDINAVIAN - Diminished industry, more craft. Small scale textile production

MEDIEVAL - Increased activity, monastic bloomeries, blast furnaces, mills, mining, quarrying, brick and tile production

POST MEDIEVAL - Dissolution of the Monasteries prompted expansion of secular-owned businesses, increased use of water power, copper/brass, expansion of coal industry (helped by improvements in transport e.g. tramways and river navigation), glass-making, gunpowder industry

1700-1840 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - Factories, textile machinery, transport revolution

1840-1914 - 'Workshop of the World'

SEAM MINING - Thick seams horizontally bedded can be exploited with shallow shaft mines spread across the area

VEIN MINING - Veins are narrow, intermittent and cut across bedding planes vertically. They were worked via open cuts and shaft sunk down the line of the veins and via adits driven from other valleys

QUARRYING AND OPENCAST MINING - Surface quarrying and opencasting could be extensive and did not generally require many built structures