British industry
Among our collections we have images of factories, power stations, mines, roads, harbours, reservoirs, airports, train stations and almost all elements of the national infrastructure.
Promotional poster for Walker & Hall factory in Sheffield
Date: 1885
Catalogue reference: View the record COPY 1/68 in the catalogue
This image is of a promotional poster for Walker & Hall of Sheffield. The company produced silverware from their factory on Howard Street, with showrooms in London and Liverpool.
Walker & Hall specialised in producing electro-plated silverware where a thin coating of silver is applied onto a cheaper metal. The process involves passing an electrical current through an electrolyte solution which contains dissolved silver ions.
The Walker & Hall works employed around 1500 workers in 1894, and their buildings were a landmark of Sheffield until they were damaged in the Sheffield Blitz in December 1940.
Cotton mill worker and warehouse boy
Date: 1906
Catalogue reference: View the record COPY 1/501/233 in the catalogue
This photograph was registered for copyright protection in September 1907 by John Richardson of 8 Rook Street, Nelson, Lancashire. On the registration form, the image is described as 'Photograph of Warehouse boy bringing Weaver up'.
We don't know which mill the photograph was taken in, but the Lancashire textile industry was huge. Burnley was dubbed the cotton-weaving capital of the world.
The photograph shows how close together the looms were, with very little room for workers to move around. The weaving sheds were filled with noisy machinery, and people working there learned to communicate by lip-reading. Many mill workers suffered damaged hearing and illnesses relating to breathing in dust.
A miner 'hand holing' a seam of coal
Date: 1913
Catalogue reference: View the record COAL 13/28 in the catalogue
This photograph shows a miner 'hand holing'. This involved extracting coal down at the base of the deposit by lying on the ground and working with a hand pick or a tool called a maundrel, which has a curved blade and a short handle.
The photograph was taken by Reverend Francis William Cobb, Rector of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, between 1907 and 1914. He used his photographs to produce 'lantern slides' to illustrate a talk called 'From Pit to Fireplace' about the history of coal mining. These slides were donated to the National Coal Board in 1966 and are now in our collection.
Teeming steel at Normanby Park Works, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire
Date: 1926–1942
Catalogue reference: View the record INF 9/873/10 in the catalogue
This photograph was taken in the Normanby Park Steel Works, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. The image shows a process known as ‘teeming’ which is when refined molten steel is poured into moulds.
The iron and steel industry began to grow around Scunthorpe from the middle of the 19th century, when deposits of ironstone were discovered and a railway line opened and improved access.
The photographer was John Dixon-Scott, who travelled around the British Isles between the wars taking photographs of rural and industrial life. Dixon-Scott wanted to record landscapes and ways of life that he believed were disappearing.
