I’ve been digging through some of my old images of the South Bank Coke Ovens. I took these around 2015. At the time it barely crossed my mind that within a decade the whole industry would be reduced to rubble.
The conservative government had an opportunity to save the industry and made the deliberate decision not to do so. The conservative mayor who vowed to bring steelmaking back to Teesside has also informed us that ‘a Tsunami’ of jobs are on the way.
The Smell of Water 
Maybe, even if we’d kept the industry, it would have to modernise and this would have had to disappear. I still think we could have and should have preserved some it. But it’s gone and gone forever. But you did a good job of preserving these images.
Cheers Mark, the structures are one thing, what they represented was another.
I think you’re right regarding modernisation. Someone with vision might have seen what was happening in Sweden where they are making fossil fuel-free steel using hydrogen. A hydrogen plant is due to be built on the Teesworks site ….they have no vision.
I’m surprised the mayor isn’t taken credit for the Swedish plant and made a claim to be reverse engineering. I totally despair of any and all politicians., all that they are consistently good at it getting everything wrong and looking after themselves. Rant headed off! ATB, John