Ghosts of Industry
Growing up in an industrial town, there was so much working history hidden in plain sight that it became part of the landscape. Buildings and structures that we pass every day become almost invisible. That is, until they actually do disappear – THEN, their absence becomes deafening.
It was only after moving away for several years and returning to work in the same familiar areas that I began to appreciate the importance of this town’s industrial heritage.
Upon my return to the area, a significant amount of ‘redevelopment’ began to take place. We lived in what was once the original town centre of Widnes, with a lot of 19th Century architecture. Gradually, old buildings began to disappear, leaving vast gaps in the streets like extracted teeth. This included a beautiful old 19th Century brick-built dairy stables that was opposite our home. We literally saw it disappear brick-by-brick over a matter of days from our windows and it was heartbreaking. The land where this stood is still empty – nothing has been developed in its place. Also, during this time, the Queen’s Hall (situated only a few hundred yards away) was torn down. This was an important building in the town’s social history; initially providing a sanctuary and place of worship and later becoming a hive of entertainment in its second life as a popular concert venue. This was also an important place for me as a young musician, as it was where all my school performances had taken place and where I played my first solo recital. It was wrenching to have to drive past this every day to work and see it torn down. My final memory of it is looking up to see half of the building gone, with the glitter ball from the main hall dangling precariously from the raw edge of broken bricks, surrounded by ominous machinery and dust.
This was quite an unsettling moment for me, and the memory has lingered for many years.
A town situated on the banks of the River Mersey naturally has several bridges in the area. The most well-known of these is perhaps the archway of the Silver Jubilee Bridge. However, there was an even more unusual and famous bridge next to this – the Widnes Transporter Bridge. This was a giant mechanical structure that winched vehicles and pedestrians across the river in a suspended carriage. It stood next to the Silver Jubilee Bridge and the Ethelfleda railway bridge for a matter of months before it was demolished in 1961. There is still some physical evidence of it, with the pump house surviving at the banks of the river and the approach to the entrance still in place in the area of West Bank. It is not difficult to imagine a ghostly outline of this huge structure still standing there.
The most recent of these ‘disappearances’, however, is the demolition of the Fiddler’s Ferry Power Station. Comprised of eight cooling towers and a taller central chimney, the site was closed in 2020 and partially demolished in 2023. The towers have always been an unmistakable landmark – visible from miles away. Whenever I could see them, wherever I had been, seeing ‘The Towers’ always meant that I was almost home. For them to be deleted completely was quite jarring. At home, the towers were close enough for us to not only hear, but FEEL the demolition take place. It was a surprisingly emotional experience – it felt as if more than just the towers were being destroyed as they came down.
These dramatic and permanent changes to the local landscape have been on my mind a lot over the last few years. There are so many vestigial remains, or ‘ghosts’ of its industrial past, but there are also elements that have been erased to all but memory. From my interest and research into local history, added to my own personal experiences, I often feel that I am surrounded by ghosts of how things once were – ones that I find more familiar than the actual landscape.
This work is my way of processing the changes and documenting them – paying respect to the heritage of the area and coming to terms with the permanency of the changes.
Lucy Pankhurst, March 2024