Hermoupolis: the archaeology of a Mediterranean industrial city

Stratton, Michael; Trinder, Barrie

doi:10.1179/iar.1994.16.2.184

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…At the Hillman works on Aldermoor Lane in Coventry, for instance, the natural slope across the site was utilised during the 1920s to aid the transfer of the components downhill through the machine shop on roller conveyors. 46 The account also noted an unusual means of driving the line shafting in part of the works. This employed a partially assembled 30cwt Vulcan lorry, secured to a framework with a belt pulley attached to the final drive shaft behind the gearbox (Figure 21).…”

Section: Interwar Expansionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Rapid expansion demanded more efficient working practices, leading to the adoption of assembly-line production by the early 1920s, following the introduction of this new system in Henry Ford's factory at Trafford Park in 1914. 64 During this period, the Vulcan Company started fitting engines manufactured elsewhere to some of their vehicles. The first use of a bought-in engine was in 1912, when a two-cylinder Aster engine was fitted to a new small car introduced to the range that year.…”

Section: Epilogue To Vulcanmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Vulcan Works, Southport: The Archaeology of an Edwardian Car Factory

Miller¹,

Stitt²

2021

Industrial Archaeology Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The widespread adoption of the motor car had what was perhaps the greatest impact on the physical and social landscape of 20th-century Britain, and yet virtually none of the early car factories have been subject to formal archaeological investigation. In 2019-20, Salford Archaeology carried out a comprehensive survey of the former Vulcan Works, a purpose-built factory that was erected near Southport in 1907 by Thomas and Joseph Hampson, two pioneers of the British motor-manufacturing industry. Initially, this 'state-of-the-art' factory comprised an architecturally impressive two-storey office with a single-storey machine and erecting shop to the rear, together with the associated power plant. Extensive additions had increased the size of the works to more than 3.6ha by 1924, and whilst the buildings were repurposed as a general engineering works in 1937, the original Edwardian car factory remained largely unaltered. The archaeological survey, coupled with historical research and limited excavation, has provided a unique record of a rare survivor of Britain's fledgling carmanufacturing industry prior to its demolition.

show abstract

Section: Interwar Expansionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Epilogue To Vulcanmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Vulcan Works, Southport: The Archaeology of an Edwardian Car Factory

Miller¹,

Stitt²

2021

Industrial Archaeology Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Modernist factories drew on new architectural styles and building materials to reject the bourgeois domestic aesthetic. 129 Boots, which had a long pedigree of paternalist welfare work, provides an interesting example of this transition. Its Beeston factory, opened in 1933, was described in press reports as an “industrial crystal palace” and “factory of utopia.” Constructed using concrete, the factory provided its workers with ample sources of daylight through large windows.…”

Section: At the Factory Gate: Boundaries Between Home And Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial Homes, Domestic Factories: The Convergence of Public and Private Space in Interwar Britain

Long¹

2011

J. Br. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Browsing through interwar editions of Industrial Welfare, 1 a journal which represented the interests of industrial welfare supervisors, one might easily in a moment of lapsed concentration imagine that it was a home and garden journal. Interspersed with articles on sports and timekeeping are numerous pieces extolling the virtues of model companies, illustrated with photographs of factory kitchens, gardens, dining rooms, restrooms and bathrooms. These images of upholstered chairs, artwork, flowers, tablecloths, beds and curtains represent the factory environment not as a site of industrial production but as an idealized middle-class home. In Britain, this vision of the 'homely' factory-a term deployed to connote a sense of coziness and to evoke the atmosphere of the domestic home-was promoted by women factory inspectors, industrial welfare supervisors, companies and advertisers seeking to reconcile modernity with tradition, to imbue mass-produced goods with an individualized hand-crafted aura, and to resolve industrial labor problems. Its origins can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when reformers from a range of social and political persuasions protested that workers had become alienated by the scale of industrial production and the subdivision of the labor process and were manifesting their discontent in disorderly conduct, apathy and industrial "warfare ." Amongst these critics of the factory system of production were John Ruskin and William Morris, pioneers of the Arts and Crafts movement which repudiated the mass-production aesthetic and sought to imbue both labor and its end products with creativity. In his 1853 essay, "The Nature of the Gothic," published in The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin railed against the "degradation of the operative into a machine" whose "fingers measure degrees like cogwheels ." To avoid social upheaval, Ruskin demanded an end to the mass-production of fripperies, advocating the production and consumption of handcrafted goods, which would constitute a "healthy and ennobling labour" by providing workers with a creative outlet. 2 In the late Victorian era, as Amy Woodson-Boulton has demonstrated, Ruskin's critique proved instrumental in the establishment of museums and art galleries. Art reformers believed that art could communicate beauty and morality through the representation of nature and viewed galleries as a rational form of recreation which could tame emotion and calm industrial discontent. 3 While Ruskin believed the industrial system of production to be beyond redemption, William Morris outlined his utopian vision of a socialist factory of the future, "a true palace of industry," which would reincorporate beauty and creativity within industrial production, as he wrote in 1884. Morris' idealized factory would combine industrial workspace with other facilities and social spaces: a dining hall, a library, a school, and "the highest and most intellectual art, pictures, sculpture" and "gardens as beautiful… as those of Alcinous." 4 In practice, Morris found it difficult ...

show abstract

“…Whilst civic identity and the role of social elites in producing a landscape in their own classed image has been of continued interest for urban historians, other than the work of Morris (2000), limited attention has been afforded to manufacturing spaces, which have remained the preserve of industrial archaeologists with a chronological detailing of architectural form (Stratton and Trinder, 1997;Trinder, 1982;Watson, 1990). This literature, though, is useful for understanding the construction and promotion of manufacturing spacesöof mill and factory buildingsöand how these were shaped by appeals to national and imperial audiences beyond, and to competitors and employees within, the city.…”

Section: Creating Place Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manufacturing Space: Gendered Cityscapes and Industrial Images in Dundee

Wainwright

2009

Environ Plan A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

contained a panoramic sketch of the city and, quoting Queen Victoria's diary Our Life in the Highlands, remarked that``Dundee is a very large place, and the port is large and open; the situation of the town is very fine''. The sketch, readers are told,``affords an idea of the natural beauties of the site. Spreading along the northern banks of the Tay, and climbing up the slopes of the Law Hill in the centre, Balgay to the west, and Craigie to the east, few cities have a finer or more healthful location.'' Taken from the Fife side of the River Tay, with the Law Hill providing the central axis, the panoramic sketch provided a pictorial background to an article that reflected on the city's`most rapid' progress over the previous fifty years. Aligned with the riverbank, the sketch showed the busy harbour traffic and, beyond the river, the``second town in Scotland in Commercial importance'' with its``numerous chimney stalks ... the majority of large dimensions, [that] indicate how busy are its manufacturers.'' By positing an image of Dundee's modernity, this promotional piece attempted to capture the city's progress and achievement through representing its physical landscape both in written and in visual form. In the words of Barke and Harrop (1994, page 96),``The message was clear: progress, wealth creation, vigour and excitement were interrelated with growth and industrialisation.'' The article contributed to a wider discourse on the city's progress, industrial importance, and place in national and imperial contextsöa process increasingly occurring in industrial towns and cities at the time, including Staffordshire, Preston, and Middlesbrough. Such`tentative' self-promotion was common at this time, reflecting 19th-century Britain's fascination with the``magic of industry'' (Briggs, 1968), coupled with``fears that the growth would no longer be as spontaneous and self-sustaining as it had been in the past'' (Ward, 1994, page 66),

show abstract

Hermoupolis: the archaeology of a Mediterranean industrial city

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

The Vulcan Works, Southport: The Archaeology of an Edwardian Car Factory

The Vulcan Works, Southport: The Archaeology of an Edwardian Car Factory

Industrial Homes, Domestic Factories: The Convergence of Public and Private Space in Interwar Britain

Manufacturing Space: Gendered Cityscapes and Industrial Images in Dundee

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About