Tosh Warwick
Dr Tosh Warwick is a Consultant with Heritage Unlocked and Research Associate in Urban Studies at the University of Sheffield.
He has previously held Research Associate roles in Urban Studies at Glasgow and REF Impact at Manchester Met. He has lectured at Huddersfield, Leeds Beckett and Teesside Universities and has extensive experience in the heritage sector where he has contributed to major National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, public and private projects. More recently, Tosh has held roles at the University of Leeds as Research, Impact and Management Support Officer and as Community Engagement Officer on the Middlesbrough Historic England High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ).
Through Heritage Unlocked, Tosh has worked as a consultant and researcher with a number of multi-million pound education, engineering and regeneration firmsacross the United Kingdom, as well as working with European heritage associations, national governments and local authorities in creating new heritage outputs and policies.
Tosh has expertise in urban history and heritage, experience in cultural and museum consultancy, education outreach, archival research and project management. He has appeared as an expert contributor for BBC Television (Match of the Day 2, Great British Railway Journeys, Inside Out), ITV Tyne Tees, BBC Leeds, BBC Sheffield, BBC Tees, Channel 5 and also written articles for the Teesside Gazette, The Northern Echo and Vice.
His PhD thesis entitled 'Middlesbrough’s Steel Magnates: Business, Culture and Participation 1880-1934' challenged existing understanding of the role of urban elites' exercised power, authority and influence. He is co-convenor of the 'Spaces, Places and Environment' strand of the Social History Society Annual Conference and has committee experience on a number of heritage and history focused bodies.
He is author of a number of academic articles and several books including 'Central Middlesbrough Through Time' (2013), 'A Town of Immigrants' (2019), 'Memories of Middlesbrough in the 1970s and 1980s' (2020), 'Memories of Mannion: South Bank's Golden Boy' (2020) and co-author of 'River Tees: From Source to Sea' (2016).
Phone: 0161 2471339
Address: Dr Tosh Warwick
Research Associate (History Research Centre Impact)
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Room no.461
Geoffrey Manton Building
Manchester Metropolitan University
He has previously held Research Associate roles in Urban Studies at Glasgow and REF Impact at Manchester Met. He has lectured at Huddersfield, Leeds Beckett and Teesside Universities and has extensive experience in the heritage sector where he has contributed to major National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, public and private projects. More recently, Tosh has held roles at the University of Leeds as Research, Impact and Management Support Officer and as Community Engagement Officer on the Middlesbrough Historic England High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ).
Through Heritage Unlocked, Tosh has worked as a consultant and researcher with a number of multi-million pound education, engineering and regeneration firmsacross the United Kingdom, as well as working with European heritage associations, national governments and local authorities in creating new heritage outputs and policies.
Tosh has expertise in urban history and heritage, experience in cultural and museum consultancy, education outreach, archival research and project management. He has appeared as an expert contributor for BBC Television (Match of the Day 2, Great British Railway Journeys, Inside Out), ITV Tyne Tees, BBC Leeds, BBC Sheffield, BBC Tees, Channel 5 and also written articles for the Teesside Gazette, The Northern Echo and Vice.
His PhD thesis entitled 'Middlesbrough’s Steel Magnates: Business, Culture and Participation 1880-1934' challenged existing understanding of the role of urban elites' exercised power, authority and influence. He is co-convenor of the 'Spaces, Places and Environment' strand of the Social History Society Annual Conference and has committee experience on a number of heritage and history focused bodies.
He is author of a number of academic articles and several books including 'Central Middlesbrough Through Time' (2013), 'A Town of Immigrants' (2019), 'Memories of Middlesbrough in the 1970s and 1980s' (2020), 'Memories of Mannion: South Bank's Golden Boy' (2020) and co-author of 'River Tees: From Source to Sea' (2016).
Phone: 0161 2471339
Address: Dr Tosh Warwick
Research Associate (History Research Centre Impact)
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Room no.461
Geoffrey Manton Building
Manchester Metropolitan University
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#history #middlesbrough #statues #captaincook
Articles by Tosh Warwick
and sculptors to explore the story of Ayresome Park, the
club’s former home from 1903 to 1995: www.mfc.co.uk/clubcommunity/
club/mfc-history/art-of-ayresome.
heralding a decline in participation by British urban elites in the day-to-day activities
of the towns and cities that housed their businesses. It is often argued that these
businessmen withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more
leisurely, country-focused, gentrified lifestyle.1 Recent work has challenged the extent
of elite withdrawal from towns and cities and this paper suggests that it is useful to
consider the period as one of reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the
Victorian ‘boom town’ rather than one characterised by decline. Taking the North
Eastern England industrial town of Middlesbrough as a case study, this article
highlights evidence of continued industrial elite involvement in the traditional areas
of influence such as municipal and economic life, as well as placing heightened
emphasis on their exercise of authority through leadership of voluntary bodies and
patronage of company-driven initiatives. It is argued that through this evolution of
industrialist urban engagement, Middlesbrough’s steel magnates continued to play a
crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
‘Ironopolis’ alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-classes that have often
been portrayed as displacing the industrial elite.
Design, Methodology, Approach: Beginning with an assessment of early interactions between Middlesbrough and North Korea, this paper analyses the way in which the relationship has been articulated and developed across several decades. Drawing upon local authority archives, historic newspaper collections, oral history and private collections, this study brings together hitherto underexplored resources, including North Korean diplomatic correspondence and interviews with the footballers of 1966, to deconstruct the multi-layered mechanisms, meanings and motivations that underpin the Middlesbrough-Pyongyang relationship.
Findings: Focusing chiefly on the role of British agency in North Korea-UK interactions, this research reveals the combination of local sporting conditions, international relations and individual and institution engagement in constructing bonds between Middlesbrough and North Korea since 1966. In doing so, the article draws out some of the peculiar local, economic and political factors that have shaped and nurtured the sporting, pseudo-diplomatic connections between Pyongyang and Teesside.
Practical Implications: This study highlights the important role that sport can play in harnessing new international interactions and understandings between peoples from different cultural and political systems. The power of football and bonds created at a local level (in this case Middlesbrough) to help nurture international diplomatic relations and embrace common transnational interests is also considered, as are the limitations of what might be considered a strand or extension of sports diplomacy.
Originality, Value: Expanding beyond the existing literature on sports diplomacy, mega events and official interactions between North Korea and the UK, this article utilises hitherto unpublished historical documentation and new oral testimony to bring a new perspective on the benefits and challenges posed by interactions across international borders facilitated by sport, both at the FIFA World Cup in 1966 and in recent decades.
Given the vital place of Middlesbrough in Briggs’ collection, it is fitting that the town plays host to the forthcoming conference Victorian Cities Revisited: Heritage and History in October. A joint initiative between the £2.6m Heritage Lottery Fund supported Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project and the University of Huddersfield (winner of the Times Higher Education University of the Year accolade), the conference brings together a host of leading academics, heritage professionals, early career historians and postgraduates to provide a forum revisiting debates surrounding Victorian cities in the past, present and future.
However, the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been seen as a period that heralded a decline in participation by British urban elites in the towns and cities that housed their businesses as they withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has however, challenged the extent of this elite withdrawal and it is the intention of this paper to argue the period instead saw a reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the Victorian Boom Town rather than a decline. Taking Middlesbrough as a case study, it will be shown that through leadership of voluntary organisations, patronage of company-driven initiatives and continued involvement with municipal authorities, the town’s steel magnates played a crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century manufacturing town alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-class organisations that emerged during this period.
In last month’s VAHS blog ‘Voluntary sector archives: A hidden casualty of the cuts?’ Georgina Brewis pointed to the threat posed to charity records by financial cuts and more practical considerations of space. While the full impact of the financial and practical difficulties affecting charity archives is yet to be felt, it appears that many records of historical interest available (at least in theory) to earlier researchers of voluntary action may not be at the disposal of future scholars.
At a time when ‘Big Society’ is at the heart of the government’s political rhetoric and stimulates new work amongst historians exploring previous incarnations of voluntary action, an issue discussed by George Campbell Gosling’s blog, researchers will require an ever more resourceful approach when carrying out research. This blog highlights the potential usefulness of locally available business archives to the researchers of voluntary action.
In my own experience, I have found Teesside Archives’ British Steel Collection a fertile resource for exploring the role Middlesbrough’s iron and steel manufacturers played in the wider community through philanthropy. The wide-ranging character of voluntary action, responses to poverty and cyclical trade depression, the role of philanthropic elite networks and the mechanisms involved in decisions to support voluntary movements can all be better understood through scrutiny of the minute books, log books, annual reports and even photographic collections of the various firms.
At a most basic level, the minute books and annual reports provide data on the causes supported by the companies and the amount of money or type of support given to various enterprises. Bodies supported ranged from churches, hospitals, schools and sports clubs to civilising institutions such as the Cleveland Literary and Philosophical Society, Constantine College and Middlesbrough Boys’ Club. The archives reveal examples of partnership between the municipal authority and voluntary associations as seen in support of the town’s Guild of Help and Juvenile Organisations Committee. Moreover, the variety of action taken in response to temporary issues can also be gauged, with war-time donations and subscriptions having included donations to the Zeppelin Raid Compensation Fund in the mining districts and contributions to ‘the fund being raised in London for the relief of the Belgian wounded and sick’.
Company minute books also provide an insight into the mechanisms involved in deciding whether to support an appeal, an area inevitably not covered in the surviving minutes of the small local charities involved (of which many of the records are incomplete or lost in their entirety). Minute books detail how individuals or groups made the decision to support a cause, recording instances where it was considered ‘unnecessary to make a grant’ and even providing examples of directors and chairman debating whether to support a voluntary venture organised by their own wives and daughters, as occurred in the case of Sir Hugh Bell and Lady Florence Bell.
Today, as increased emphasis is placed on voluntary financial support of those institutions and organisations serving the community, business records also serve as a warning against an over-reliance on such practices. Just as economic decline has threatened charitable contributions by corporations in recent years, the impact of strife on charitable support by firms in the inter-war manufacturing town can be found amidst the various steel companies’ accounts and directors meeting records. For instance, steel manufacturer Bolckow Vaughan’s decline in the mid 1920s coupled with distress in the locality, which had seen the firm’s £1000 allocated for ‘religious and charitable institutions’ having ‘almost been exhausted’, led to the directors agreeing only to ‘pay the more urgent of the annual donations’. Similarly, the post-crash depression influenced rival firm Dorman Long’s outlook on giving. As the main financial contributors to the Juvenile Organisations Committee and Boys’ Club, the firm wrote to both bodies informing them that ‘subscriptions at their present level must not be counted upon if more general support was not forthcoming’.
Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.
Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.
Books by Tosh Warwick
This book focuses on the importance of migration in Middlesbrough’s recent history. Through an essay by historian Tosh Warwick we discover some of the tragic moments of tension that have arisen locally from national and international contexts of conflict and economic turmoil. The title of this book is a quotation from a timeline of the area’s history made collectively at public events at MIMA in 2015. In 2017, MIMA organised an event of the same title and invited Tosh to develop a paper which formed the foundation for the essay published here. We are grateful to Tosh for this ongoing collaboration and for sharing his research in such succinct terms.
This publication was made possible through a fruitful and thoughtful partnership with Akademie der bildenden Künste, Austria; Moderna galerija MG+MSUM, Slovenia and Museum of Yugoslavia, Serbia and with funding from the European Commission. This cross-European endeavour has formed an important intellectual space for us at a time of political change. MIMA is made up of contributions by a range of constituents and we’d like to thank those who were part of this programme. We are grateful to the team at MIMA and associate artists, facilitators and practitioners who bring our programmes into being. As ever, designer Joanna Deans is key to making this publication and I have had the pleasure of working with researcher and curator Ashleigh Barice as co-editor to make this series of books a reality.
It is thought that Middlesbrough was the first major British town and industrial target to be bombed during the Second World War. The steel industry and railways were obvious targets for the Luftwaffe. Middlesbrough suffered heavy damage and following the war substantial redevelopment was necessary. The substantial changes the town has since seen are explored in this fascinating volume, celebrating the rise of Middlesbrough from the ashes of its past.
Press by Tosh Warwick
#history #middlesbrough #statues #captaincook
and sculptors to explore the story of Ayresome Park, the
club’s former home from 1903 to 1995: www.mfc.co.uk/clubcommunity/
club/mfc-history/art-of-ayresome.
heralding a decline in participation by British urban elites in the day-to-day activities
of the towns and cities that housed their businesses. It is often argued that these
businessmen withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more
leisurely, country-focused, gentrified lifestyle.1 Recent work has challenged the extent
of elite withdrawal from towns and cities and this paper suggests that it is useful to
consider the period as one of reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the
Victorian ‘boom town’ rather than one characterised by decline. Taking the North
Eastern England industrial town of Middlesbrough as a case study, this article
highlights evidence of continued industrial elite involvement in the traditional areas
of influence such as municipal and economic life, as well as placing heightened
emphasis on their exercise of authority through leadership of voluntary bodies and
patronage of company-driven initiatives. It is argued that through this evolution of
industrialist urban engagement, Middlesbrough’s steel magnates continued to play a
crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
‘Ironopolis’ alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-classes that have often
been portrayed as displacing the industrial elite.
Design, Methodology, Approach: Beginning with an assessment of early interactions between Middlesbrough and North Korea, this paper analyses the way in which the relationship has been articulated and developed across several decades. Drawing upon local authority archives, historic newspaper collections, oral history and private collections, this study brings together hitherto underexplored resources, including North Korean diplomatic correspondence and interviews with the footballers of 1966, to deconstruct the multi-layered mechanisms, meanings and motivations that underpin the Middlesbrough-Pyongyang relationship.
Findings: Focusing chiefly on the role of British agency in North Korea-UK interactions, this research reveals the combination of local sporting conditions, international relations and individual and institution engagement in constructing bonds between Middlesbrough and North Korea since 1966. In doing so, the article draws out some of the peculiar local, economic and political factors that have shaped and nurtured the sporting, pseudo-diplomatic connections between Pyongyang and Teesside.
Practical Implications: This study highlights the important role that sport can play in harnessing new international interactions and understandings between peoples from different cultural and political systems. The power of football and bonds created at a local level (in this case Middlesbrough) to help nurture international diplomatic relations and embrace common transnational interests is also considered, as are the limitations of what might be considered a strand or extension of sports diplomacy.
Originality, Value: Expanding beyond the existing literature on sports diplomacy, mega events and official interactions between North Korea and the UK, this article utilises hitherto unpublished historical documentation and new oral testimony to bring a new perspective on the benefits and challenges posed by interactions across international borders facilitated by sport, both at the FIFA World Cup in 1966 and in recent decades.
Given the vital place of Middlesbrough in Briggs’ collection, it is fitting that the town plays host to the forthcoming conference Victorian Cities Revisited: Heritage and History in October. A joint initiative between the £2.6m Heritage Lottery Fund supported Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project and the University of Huddersfield (winner of the Times Higher Education University of the Year accolade), the conference brings together a host of leading academics, heritage professionals, early career historians and postgraduates to provide a forum revisiting debates surrounding Victorian cities in the past, present and future.
However, the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been seen as a period that heralded a decline in participation by British urban elites in the towns and cities that housed their businesses as they withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has however, challenged the extent of this elite withdrawal and it is the intention of this paper to argue the period instead saw a reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the Victorian Boom Town rather than a decline. Taking Middlesbrough as a case study, it will be shown that through leadership of voluntary organisations, patronage of company-driven initiatives and continued involvement with municipal authorities, the town’s steel magnates played a crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century manufacturing town alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-class organisations that emerged during this period.
In last month’s VAHS blog ‘Voluntary sector archives: A hidden casualty of the cuts?’ Georgina Brewis pointed to the threat posed to charity records by financial cuts and more practical considerations of space. While the full impact of the financial and practical difficulties affecting charity archives is yet to be felt, it appears that many records of historical interest available (at least in theory) to earlier researchers of voluntary action may not be at the disposal of future scholars.
At a time when ‘Big Society’ is at the heart of the government’s political rhetoric and stimulates new work amongst historians exploring previous incarnations of voluntary action, an issue discussed by George Campbell Gosling’s blog, researchers will require an ever more resourceful approach when carrying out research. This blog highlights the potential usefulness of locally available business archives to the researchers of voluntary action.
In my own experience, I have found Teesside Archives’ British Steel Collection a fertile resource for exploring the role Middlesbrough’s iron and steel manufacturers played in the wider community through philanthropy. The wide-ranging character of voluntary action, responses to poverty and cyclical trade depression, the role of philanthropic elite networks and the mechanisms involved in decisions to support voluntary movements can all be better understood through scrutiny of the minute books, log books, annual reports and even photographic collections of the various firms.
At a most basic level, the minute books and annual reports provide data on the causes supported by the companies and the amount of money or type of support given to various enterprises. Bodies supported ranged from churches, hospitals, schools and sports clubs to civilising institutions such as the Cleveland Literary and Philosophical Society, Constantine College and Middlesbrough Boys’ Club. The archives reveal examples of partnership between the municipal authority and voluntary associations as seen in support of the town’s Guild of Help and Juvenile Organisations Committee. Moreover, the variety of action taken in response to temporary issues can also be gauged, with war-time donations and subscriptions having included donations to the Zeppelin Raid Compensation Fund in the mining districts and contributions to ‘the fund being raised in London for the relief of the Belgian wounded and sick’.
Company minute books also provide an insight into the mechanisms involved in deciding whether to support an appeal, an area inevitably not covered in the surviving minutes of the small local charities involved (of which many of the records are incomplete or lost in their entirety). Minute books detail how individuals or groups made the decision to support a cause, recording instances where it was considered ‘unnecessary to make a grant’ and even providing examples of directors and chairman debating whether to support a voluntary venture organised by their own wives and daughters, as occurred in the case of Sir Hugh Bell and Lady Florence Bell.
Today, as increased emphasis is placed on voluntary financial support of those institutions and organisations serving the community, business records also serve as a warning against an over-reliance on such practices. Just as economic decline has threatened charitable contributions by corporations in recent years, the impact of strife on charitable support by firms in the inter-war manufacturing town can be found amidst the various steel companies’ accounts and directors meeting records. For instance, steel manufacturer Bolckow Vaughan’s decline in the mid 1920s coupled with distress in the locality, which had seen the firm’s £1000 allocated for ‘religious and charitable institutions’ having ‘almost been exhausted’, led to the directors agreeing only to ‘pay the more urgent of the annual donations’. Similarly, the post-crash depression influenced rival firm Dorman Long’s outlook on giving. As the main financial contributors to the Juvenile Organisations Committee and Boys’ Club, the firm wrote to both bodies informing them that ‘subscriptions at their present level must not be counted upon if more general support was not forthcoming’.
Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.
Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.
This book focuses on the importance of migration in Middlesbrough’s recent history. Through an essay by historian Tosh Warwick we discover some of the tragic moments of tension that have arisen locally from national and international contexts of conflict and economic turmoil. The title of this book is a quotation from a timeline of the area’s history made collectively at public events at MIMA in 2015. In 2017, MIMA organised an event of the same title and invited Tosh to develop a paper which formed the foundation for the essay published here. We are grateful to Tosh for this ongoing collaboration and for sharing his research in such succinct terms.
This publication was made possible through a fruitful and thoughtful partnership with Akademie der bildenden Künste, Austria; Moderna galerija MG+MSUM, Slovenia and Museum of Yugoslavia, Serbia and with funding from the European Commission. This cross-European endeavour has formed an important intellectual space for us at a time of political change. MIMA is made up of contributions by a range of constituents and we’d like to thank those who were part of this programme. We are grateful to the team at MIMA and associate artists, facilitators and practitioners who bring our programmes into being. As ever, designer Joanna Deans is key to making this publication and I have had the pleasure of working with researcher and curator Ashleigh Barice as co-editor to make this series of books a reality.
It is thought that Middlesbrough was the first major British town and industrial target to be bombed during the Second World War. The steel industry and railways were obvious targets for the Luftwaffe. Middlesbrough suffered heavy damage and following the war substantial redevelopment was necessary. The substantial changes the town has since seen are explored in this fascinating volume, celebrating the rise of Middlesbrough from the ashes of its past.
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/18417165.day-boro-left-ayresome-park-victory-luton/
Tosh Warwick has written several articles and books on the town's industrial history and heritage. He is currently completing a new book on Middlesbrough’s history and heritage entitled ‘A-Z of Middlesbrough’. It will be published by Amberley Publishing later this year. This is the first of two essays.
Following the release of River Tees: From Source to Sea, a new book co-authored with Jenny Parker, Dr Tosh Warwick explores the role of the Tees in the area’s industrial history.
Tosh Warwick has written several articles and books on the town's industrial history and heritage. He is currently completing a new book on Middlesbrough’s history and heritage entitled ‘A-Z of Middlesbrough’.
It will be published by Amberley Publishing later this year. This is the second of two essays.
Analysing engagement with and responses to the regeneration and reminiscence activities that formed part of the landmark’s centenary celebrations supported by the (then) Heritage Lottery Fund, this paper considers the various ways in which the Transporter has been portrayed and understood across the decades against the backdrop of industrial decline. In doing so, the changing impact, reach and significance of heritage is considered amidst debates spanning calls for closure, preservation, celebration and questions of relevance in the twenty first century deindustrialised former ‘Ironopolis’.
Following on from the Bridge’s 2011 centenary, the HLF-supported Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project has celebrated and explored the landmark through a range of new interpretation, pageant and reminiscence activities. The launch of the new ‘Visitor Experience’ in late 2015 coincided with the end of steel manufacturing on Teesside inextricably linked to the area’s identity and in particular its bridge-building heritage. This paper considers how the Tees Transporter Bridge serves as an evocative, sometimes contentious, platform for inspiring memories of yesteryear’s industrial heyday whilst provoking a sense of loss and dislocation in the post-industrial town.
It will be contended that the ongoing preservation and reinterpretation of this urban landmark and space has highlighted how sites of industrial heritage serve as an apparatus for creating an often romanticised ‘sense of place’ and helped celebrate Teesside’s rich bridge-building history in particular.
This paper looks to these two occasions of racial disturbances and targeted attacks in Cannon Street, dubbed in the press as Middlesbrough’s ‘little Harlem’, and will consider the impact of such attacks on notions of urban belonging and social integration in a town defined by immigration since its emergence as a Victorian ‘boom town’. By turning attention to the events of 1914 and 1961, it will be contended that although both were short-term disturbances amidst relatively harmonious relations between migrant, naturalised and British citizens, the legacies of the First World War violence and later ‘Cannon Street Riots’ have played a key role in shaping historical and wider narratives of the now-demolished Cannon Street area of Middlesbrough.
This paper explores the role of the historic pageant as a mechanism for industrial elite patronage, performance and power beyond the manufacturing town. In exploring the pageant from its development to its fruition, it will be contended that by engaging a wide range of participants from across the Bell’s business, cultural philanthropic and political networks, The Historic Pageant of Mount Grace Priory reflects the multifaceted engagement of this leading industrialist family and showcases the role pageantry played in wider associational and cultural relations in interwar Britain. Moreover, it will be contended that the performance and dissemination of the industrial elite’s cultural interest in and knowledge of history highlights the role of the Bells as leading figures in local cultural engagement and as champions of the importance of the past.
Organiser: James Sumner (University of Manchester)
Chair: Karin Tybjerg (University of Copenhagen)
Presenters: Louise Miskell, James Sumner, John V. Tucker, Tosh Warwick
This session ties together several growth areas for research – historical geographies of science and industry, collaborative historical research with industrial partners and public engagement through museums and community venues – to assess the opportunities for telling connected stories about industry and its legacies through case studies based on present and former sites of manufacturing and freight. Projects may reveal otherwise undocumented features of former working practices, the affective character of sites and the social and domestic lives surrounding the workplace. Can this evidence be meshed successfully with data from industrial archaeology or economic history? And what are our options for recovering details of lived experience from the period before living memory? We will also consider how historical professionals should deal with communities’ own sense of heritage and historical identity and how the physical terrain of industrial working can itself be used for education and engagement.
The reports and ledgers of Middlesbrough iron and steel firms might not seem the most obvious places to look when exploring Victorian and Edwardian civic and political life. Yet Teesside Archives’ British Steel Collection, which conserves the records of manufacturers such as Dorman Long, is central to the Heritage Lottery Fund-supported Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project, drawing on the stories of long-lost ironmasters, steel magnates, buildings and institutions to explore Middlesbrough’s emergence as the ‘Ironopolis’, arguably the leading example of the Victorian ‘boom town’. The experience of the Teesside project has fed into a newer initiative, led by Swansea University, to improve researcher access to the records of the Welsh steel industry, with recent negotiations with Tata Steel opening opportunities to address important industrial stories. The planning and construction of the Abbey Steelworks, Port Talbot, which formed the cornerstone of the modernisation plan for Britain’s steel industry after the Second World War, offer a new perspective on a key phase of post-war reconstruction in which the town was re-shaped and re-branded a ‘steel city’. The heritage potential of Port Talbot’s steel story is still relatively unexplored, but several initiatives have begun to reveal its possibilities. This paper will highlight some of the different challenges faced in telling the story of steel in these two towns, and will consider how bringing together historic business records, existing histories and augmented reality technology can help to contextualise the social history and built environment of industrial areas.
In his chapter on the ‘growth of the new community’ of Middlesbrough in his landmark Victorian Cities, Briggs (1963) contended that from the later nineteenth century period onwards, the will of the town’s ironmasters to engage in the life of the town had dwindled, with the second and subsequent generations of industrialists and managers. In line with notions of a ‘decline of the industrial spirit’ stressed by Wiener (1981) and emphasis in subsequent works exploring the role of Middlesbrough’s manufacturers by Hadfield (1979) and Stubley (1979) the town’s industrialists have been presented as having withdrawn from participation from 1880 up to the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, these arguments for elite withdrawal from the urban sphere have developed based upon a reduced representation and visibility of those magnates from municipal involvement as councillors and a perceived reduced participation in business activities with the rise of the general manager.
This paper, an output of the Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project and reproduced here with permissions, provides a brief overview of the historic Tees landmark before turning attention to the HLF and repainting projects, the challenges associated with extensive renovation of the Grade II* listed heritage structure and the wider heritage and regeneration benefits of the scheme.
This paper was presented with Rodger Wakerley at 'Bridges 2015 23rd Annual Conference and Exhibition' in March 2015.
This paper will contest that whilst residence in the country houses located in Middlesbrough’s surrounding hinterland undoubtedly impacted upon the industrialists’ day-to-day engagement with the town, the implications of these changing residential patterns on elite urban activity have been exaggerated. Whilst the shift of chief industrialists from residence within five minutes’ walk of the smoke engulfed old market to estates spanning several thousand acres set amidst North Yorkshire countryside undoubtedly changed their alignment with the town, it will be shown how the changing residential patterns represented a new form of urban engagement. Not only did the steel magnates remain very much a part of the urban fold owing to the transport networks that provided an artery into the town, moreover these grand residences represented blurred boundaries between the urban and the rural.
It will be shown through a study of key institutions, initiatives and occasions in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Middlesbrough, including the opening of the landmark Tees Transporter Bridge, that the industrialists’ country houses operated as spheres for philanthropic, cultural and leisure pursuits inextricably linked with Middlesbrough and their businesses. By exploring these various facets of elite residence patterns, it is hoped that this paper will highlight some of the complexities of, and challenge assumptions based upon, the spatial realignment of urban elites with the manufacturing town.
Until recently, the subsequent generations of industrialist families as less engaged in the cultural, economic, political and social aspects of the urban sphere has been reinforced in subsequent works on Middlesbrough and manufacturing towns elsewhere. However, with urban history’s expansion from a focus on traditional government to the wider spheres of governance, the extent of this withdrawal and diminishing patronage has been reassessed. Notably, recent work of Mike Huggins, Catherine Budd and Margaret Williamson has pointed to the vibrancy of company leisure on Teesside.
Drawing extensively on the records of iron and steel firms, this paper will highlight the key role of Middlesbrough’s manufacturers in providing sporting facilities into the interwar period. Through a case study of the major steel and bridge building firm Dorman Long, it will be shown how the steel magnates played a vital role in financing, shaping and organising the development of sporting clubs, facilities and large scale events for tens of thousands of workers and their families in the manufacturing town.
The paper was presented as part of the £2.6m Heritage Lottery Fund supported Tees Transporter Bridge Visitor Experience Project.
However, recent focus on the wider range of sites of urban power across different towns and cities has tempered the emphasis on urban elite withdrawal. Resultantly, exploration of honorific activity, involvement with charities, associations and societies, and the changing roles played in ‘public’ events, as emphasised in Trainor’s study of the Black Country and Doyle’s assessment of urban power in Norwich, has provided a platform for new reassessment of elite withdrawal.
Adopting a case study approach focusing on key events in the town's history, this paper will focus on the Victorian boom town of Middlesbrough and will highlight some of the uses and limitations of focusing on public culture to gauge the extent of elite withdrawal during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The paper will start with the town’s 1881 jubilee celebration before moving into the early twentieth century with opening of the Tees Transporter Bridge, events that celebrated the industrial progress of the ‘Infant Hercules’. Moving into the interwar period, attention will then turn to the 1931 funerals of two of the town’s most celebrated manufacturers, before concluding with the Royal Opening of Tees Newport Bridge in 1934. It will be argued that the town’s key industrialist families remained involved in local affairs into the interwar period, long beyond has been suggested for many other towns and cities, albeit by the mid 1930s at a diminished level.
http://socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange/russia-2018/
‘Digital Victorians’ module. The wider theme of exploring Victorian
democracy using digital technologies will be discussed in a short talk by module leader Dr Tosh Warwick followed by a series of
presentations by students delving into a number of topics relating to local democracy at the heart of Huddersfield’s democracy through
time.
There will also be an opportunity for participants to view some documents from historic collections and digital resources relating to the themes explored as part of Local Democracy Week 2018.