Rising Chimney Steam (by Mimi McGarry)

As we drive and darkness falls,
shapes begin to show,
silhouettes grow,
then clouds cast over,
it gets dark, as dark as night,
a storm blows rain like threads from sky.
When rain has fallen, washed skies clear;
here we go again, suddenly appear
chimneys rising in the distance,
making sharp vertical lines,
showing their ready, yet switched off selves.
with the rose tinted background
of the setting sun,
leading to nostalgic thoughts of times long gone,
these chimneys here,
were meant to smoke.

My main feeling when I was driving to Oswaldwistle with Luan at my side, was excitement about getting to know this place. She had told me how amazing the sight will be as we drive in to this region, and so it was a shame it had suddenly turned very dark, so much so we had to believe the sun had already set. Worried we won't see the view she remembered so well from way back when she was a child and used to drive to this region with her family, she described the Lowry painting in the previous post to me. Then by chance the final light of day started to glow for another short moment just so we could see, in a red and black silhouette, the view we had waited for; arriving in Lancashire.

This was going to be my first visit ever to this landscape and its industrial buildings with their sharp outlines nestled within; representing the history of textiles in its glory and gloom, where working may have meant lives lived slaving away, drenched in steaming heat, amongst cream coloured cotton, with oil stained clothes and danger everywhere.

And then how the loss of the textile industry meant loss of work and purpose for so many. Why do I feel nostalgia for this industry? Arriving to start our research into women workers' stories, I felt moved by the symbolic chimneys without smoke, the textile industry gone elsewhere. Imagine us the next day walking along this path, finding a chimney tucked into the valley, this time with smoke billowing out.

Where have all the chimneys gone? (by Luan Blake)

The journey to Lanacashire was enveloped with nostalgia and anticiapation. On childhood trips to visit relatives, I always felt I was ‘coming home’.
I loved Barm cakes, I loved the dialect, I loved the fact my northern accent would come back, I loved the way my Aunty would call me ‘Cock’.

But It was really the poetry of the landscape that got me, carved out of valley and moor, factories and mills with their tall smoking stacks. Cobbled streets, viaducts and lines of working class houses with back alleys. It was this Industrial landscape in all its smokey glory that I loved, so different from Devon where I grew up.

So here we were travelling back to Oswaldtwistle to visit my Nana who worked in the Cotton Industry as a weaver, as well as working in munitions and other factories during her life. She would be my first port of call.

Oswaldtwistle is in the borough of Hyndburn in North West Lancashire. At one time, it had over 25 Mills, with Cotton Spinning and Printing being the chief industries. James Hargreaves was born in Oswaldtwistle, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny. The people of Oswaldtwistle were involved in the power-loom riots of 1826. The mechanisation of the textile industry with the introduction of looms powered by steam engines from the 1820s onwards resulted in redundancies, low wages, and starvation. On 26 April a large number of cotton workers attacked the White Ash factory (Brookside Mill) in Oswaldtwistle, about a mile from Hargreaves' workshop, destroying looms and other equipment. The riots went on for three days, extending to all cotton towns in central Lancashire.

Forward wind to today, and there are no chimneys left, no mills, no industry. The only remaining mill building is the old Moscow Mill, now turned into a miserable shopping complex called ‘Ossie Mills’ The town appears somewhat redundant now, like the mining towns of Wales, or the steel making towns of the North and the ship building areas of the North East. It seems to have been abandoned, it has lost its purpose, it is out of work.