COMMENT
Business Buzz
with Harry Pearson
ICONIC BRIDGE MUST NOT BE LEFT TO RUST IN PEACE
Harry gives us his thoughts on the importance of preserving our industrial heritage – and as usual, it’ s a right riveting read...
Sitting on my desk as I type is an old and rusted three-inch steel rivet encased in a Perspex block. The casing is clouded, the rivet is reddish brown, its top cap dented and skewed to one side. It belonged to my father. If he told me where it came from I have forgotten and, since he died in March, there is no one left to remind me now.
My father was a structural engineer at Teesside Bridge, Dorman Long and Cleveland Bridge. The men he worked alongside had big faces, crushing hand-shakes and nononsense names – Don, John, Ken, Bob( all that is save one, a South Bank steel erector whose father had won big at Doncaster on the day he was born and named his son with a flourish of joy after the winner and the race: Hyperion St Leger Duffy).
In the 1970s, Cleveland Bridge moved from its original works in Darlington to a massive new state-of-the-art plant in Yarm Road. Everything was cleared out. Historic plans were burned; beautiful scale models of bridges, unwanted by museums and too big for any home, were heaved into skips. A brave new world awaited.
Once, I suggested to my father that we could collaborate on a book about his life erecting steel.“ Nobody would want to read that,” he said definitively. A steelworks is no place for sentimentality, introspection or mindfulness. And yet, here is this rivet preserved in plastic.
The rivet and its provenance has been on my mind lately, because it was Cleveland Bridge that designed the Transporter, which – as you’ ll read elsewhere in this issue – is currently in genuine danger of destruction for want of the money needed to restore and maintain it. The Transporter is as much a symbol of Teesside as the Sydney Harbour Bridge is of Sydney or the Tyne Bridge of Newcastle( both built by the Middlesbrough firm Dorman Long, as you won’ t need reminding). Yet, if something isn’ t done, it could be gone.
The rivet was also on my mind in early November, too. I went over to Germany to visit friends who live in Essen. Essen is part of the Ruhr region, an area of steel and coal production the Germans call“ the land of fire and
Landmark – the Transporter Bridge is as much a symbol of Teesside as the Sydney Harbour Bridge is of Sydney or the Tyne Bridge of Newcastle.
smoke”. While I was there we went to visit the three giant redundant blast furnaces of the former Thyssen Ironworks. These now form the central point in the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park. The park is a brilliant piece of imaginative repurposing. The massive concrete coke bins have become climbing walls and the coal shed is now a concert hall and cinema. More surprisingly, the blast furnaces are a soughtafter photographic backdrop for those with more, erm, niche interests. During my visit I encountered a man dressed as an intergalactic warlord brandishing a ray-gun, several Star Wars characters and a French maid being chased by a mutant creature with chainsaws for arms. It’ s not the sort of thing you’ d come across at Hartlepool Historic Quay on a Saturday morning, but it shows how the locals truly have embraced the place.
The same holds true of the huge Gasometer in Middlesbrough’ s twin town of Oberhausen. This 120m-tall steel tower once stored coal and blast furnace gases. Today it’ s an exhibition centre that attracts around 25,000 paying customers per week.
The Gasometer and the Duisburg blast furnaces are key points along the European Route of Industrial Heritage, a pilgrim’ s way for lovers of heavy industry that stretches from Finland to Spain. They draw in funding and attract publicity and visitors from around the world. The European Route of Industrial Heritage has nine sites in Britain. None of them are located between Bradford and Lanark. It’ s like Teesside contributed nothing at all to the world of smoke and fire. And that’ s not right, is it?
We need to make more fuss about our achievements, celebrate and adapt them like the Germans of the Ruhr have done. Because if we are not careful, if we allow the Transporter to follow so much of what has already been chucked away, all that will be left of our heritage is this rusty old rivet sitting on my desk.
Harry Pearson’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now.
162 | Tees Business