Birchills Hall Ironworks, as shown on the1886/1886 first epoch 1:2,500 Ordnance Survey draft of Walsall. Please click for a larger version.
I’m a bit busy today preparing some mapping goodness relating to the Birchills (Hall) Iron Works, in Walsall, which was a bit of a surprise hit when I covered it on Friday.
It seems the mapping record for this site is intricate, covers a lot of societal and technological change and is rather wonderful.
As a taster, here’s what the site looked like in the early 1880s. To orient it, north is up, Green Lane runs down from top left to near bottom centre; the works is just northeast of the canal junction still present today.
I’ll be back with more of this soon, but just take a close look at this landscape. Try and imagine how it looked, smelled and felt. This was an industrial heartland, with no respect for the environment in the quest for materials or space.
Imagine the air, the smoke, the sound, the fury. It must have been an amazing and frightening sight.