Industry and the Coast

In the 1960s, many of the heavy industries in the North East of England were still busy, but facing fundamental change as better technology and foreign competition swept towards them. There is thus a singular beauty and poignancy to the shipyard cranes on the Tyne and the Wear, the towering blast furnaces, the chemical works on Teeside, infrastructure for coal shipping from Seaham Harbour and Sunderland, and home-made houseboats resting in the mud...In an era when pollution was less of a concern, dusty furnaces, smoking chimneys, and untreated waste went straight into the North Sea. Yet not too far away were glorious beaches and unspoiled countryside, and billboards advertising Roy Orbison's tour visit! People, too, were caught up in this poignant moment of transition: young lads looking for something to do; old men watching it all go by; workers busy at the docks. Industry & The Coast is a gritty, 'warts-and-all' depiction of areas with a unique story to tell, immortalised in haunting, previously unpublished images, and a captivating narrative in which the author draws from the abandoned emblems of our industrial history a deeper human significance and sense of place.