Nostalgia
By Sally Campbell
Nostalgia is an affectionate feeling you have for the past, especially for a particularly happy time. We can all relate to that, as I heard even yesterday in the drop in with the CalMac team who spent the morning listening to stories from long term residents about the wonders of the ferry in days gone by, going to Gourock, their sorrows of changes, their anger at being let down (bring back Captain “who was it?” (Capt.McCrindle) was a common cry!) The “good old ferry days”!
The Encyclopedia Britannica describes Nostalgia as meaning pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again.
Early in June we attended a good friend’s funeral in Birkenhead, an area where John spent his childhood and teenage years around on the Wirral, and to which I was introduced in the mid 1960s. It evoked memories and a lot of nostalgia, differently in both of us. We decided to revisit some of those old haunts which were still standing, whilst we were on the Wirral.
The newness of the experiences on Merseyside in the 1960s are still with me, as someone from the rural county of Wiltshire, where in those days you could picnic sitting on the stones at Stonehenge with no one else around. Industry was agriculture and the army on Salisbury Plain. Coming to Merseyside was an amazement. Back then I was even given the opportunity to visit where John had worked. John Summers and Sons Ltd steel making works at Shotton in North Wales and was amazed at big ladles of molten iron and the rolling mills. And the noise too! Sadly, steel making long since all closed. So, whilst on The Wirral we revisited some of the other areas we had known well. At that time Birkenhead Docks were alive with traffic and my thrill then was in crossing the Mersey to Liverpool on the famous ferry. The Birkenhead Docks, now deserted and forlorn, where once we saw huge steam locomotives being lifted onto ships to be taken to Africa. Containerisation has changed the whole Merseyside Area. The Birkenhead docks too small and non-viable for the huge container vessels.
Today’s largest container ship can carry about 24,000 TEUs (Twenty-foot equivalent unit). The carrying capacity of today’s largest container vessels is equivalent to no less than a 44 miles long freight train. A large container ship engine has about 1,250 times more power than a family car and is similar in size to a typical six-story building. They have 24 bays and carry between 18,000 and 21,000 TEUs or 9,000 to 10,500 forty-foot containers. The TEUs are a unit that indicates the number of containers the ships can carry. The Triple-E can carry between 18,000-21,000 twenty-foot containers or up to 165,000 tons. How things have changed since the 1960s with globalisation and consumer demands.
But there are good changes too, a huge flour mill converted into flats, alongside the old dock; and next door, Urban Splash building small contemporary homes. Over the next years there will be further developments, new businesses and a new tram system.
Near the old dock wall, which is a truly magnificent Ruabon red brick wall, still intact, we found Dockside Salvage, a gem of recycling of everything from bricks, slates, fireplaces and bric-a-brac, that term first used in the Victorian era, around 1840, which refers to lesser objets d’art forming collections of curios. Just as well we were only with a car, or I would have been tempted, as there was some wonderful salvage there; so good to see such things being sold on to re-use, sources from the local demolition of old terraces around the docks. Especially splendid fireplaces. If you need anything try there! www.docksidesalvage.com
Despite the dereliction around the docks, a couple of minutes away there is Birkenhead Park generally acknowledged as the first publicly funded civic park in the world. It is a major public park located in the centre of Birkenhead. Still full of wonderful trees and open green spaces. It was designed by Joseph Paxton and opened by him on 5 April 1847, with the aim of creating a ‘park for the people’. Birkenhead became a major influence on Frederick Law Olmsted’s design of Central Park in New York. A Private Act of Parliament was passed, allowing – for the first time – a Local Authority to use public money to create a public park that could be used by everyone. The park was designated a conservation area in 1977 and declared a Grade I listed landscape by English Heritage in 1995. In 2023 the park was placed on the UK government’s “tentative list” of applications for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. To have such a great green space so close to industrial docks and in those days, closely packed terraced small houses must have been wonderful for the local people. It still is. When so much of the other green spaces on The Wirral have disappeared under housing estates, roads and other developments, we were so pleased it is flourishing.
Much of Birkenhead has changed, swept away, like around the docks, but the grand Hamilton Square is still as splendid as I remembered. This Georgian square, which was designed by Edinburgh architect James Gillespie Graham, has the most Grade I listed buildings outside London (after Trafalgar Square). It is named after the family of the wife of Scottish shipbuilder William Laird. In 1801 Birkenhead was still a small, undeveloped village on the banks of the River Mersey. With a recorded population of 110, it was overshadowed by the huge maritime port of Liverpool. In 1824 William Laird established a boiler works at Wallasey Pool and this site developed into a shipbuilding yard. By 1831 the population of Birkenhead had risen to 2,790. As Birkenhead’s economy grew, Laird had great plans for the area. In 1824, he had already bought land around Birkenhead on which he planned to build a new town. Coming back to the square found me more interested in the history of the whole area than I had been in the 1960s. My only complaint would be you needed an App to park, no coin machines. I had a long discussion with a local woman who told the story of unemployment and drugs now so prevalent in Birkenhead, which reminded us that many old industrial areas still feel helpless in a nation that “forgot them”.
The skyline of Liverpool has changed completely since the 1960s except for the towering Anglican Cathedral on the hill. New container port and cranes dominate the skyline. As the sun set, another change out beyond the ports and river are now the windfarms, powering renewable energy. Progress comes in many forms and close to those cranes on the beach at Crosby the spectacular sculptures by Antony Gormley. “Another Place” consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometres of the foreshore, stretching almost one kilometre out to sea.
The west end of the Wirral is surrounded by the sea and we were astonished by the changes in the sand level and the growth of the marshes along this stretch. Of course, Chester was once a port on the River Dee and served the Romans there. Over time the port moved down the Wirral due to silting of the river, so the port at Parkgate which had boats in the 1960s, but no longer. Parkgate was important from the start of the 18th century, in particular as an embarkation point for Ireland. The rise of the sand deposition around the Wirral is astonishing in such a short time, and a reminder that the forces of tides, wind, climate and substrate are constantly changing. The marshes now stretch out far into the estuary from Parkgate and is an RSPB reserve in part. I wonder what will happen with climate change and sea rise, as already sea walls are being introduced or heightened in housing vulnerability. A bit like Canute!
Leaving the Wirral we crossed the Pennines, a wonderful drive, to North Yorkshire, stopping in Thirsk where a market was in progress reminding us of the days gone by, to visit a good friend in Hutton Rudby, where we lived throughout the 1970’s during which John was involved in British Steel and we enjoyed, as a family, the moors, clagging bagging in the snow, and a village community. Hutton Rudby is still an attractive village, expanded hugely. As a family we loved the North Yorkshire coast so we chose this time to stay in Skinningrove, which in the 19th century discovered and mined iron ore, so developing the industry on Teesside. The beaches and the fossils along the Jurassic coast from Skinningrove to Whitby were a hunting ground for our interests…marine ecology and geology… through those years and the beaches at low tide a mecca for every sort of marine creature, as well as fossils like ammonites, belemnites and even jet, fossilised driftwood. I took children from our primary school to follow the tide and understand more about tides, and different reasons why animals and plants live at different tidal heights. The beach at Skinningrove is still wonderfully empty of tourists, but further south Staithes, Runswick Bay, Sandsend are so busy they have lost their charm to me, and the homes are now mostly second or tourist rented. Only Skinningrove still has a high local population, and although only 12, rather than the 30 or 40 pigeon lofts, are still occupied, there is a community interested in racing pigeons. This Yorkshire coast is wonderful, rejuvenating, and the village has a newly opened Mining Museum.
The grouser (caterpillar/tank tracks) steel works are still on the top of the cliff but now owned by the Chinese, a symptom of the enormous changes on Teesside. Perhaps the saddest, most sobering sight was the wreck of the huge steel works near Redcar, on the river Tees, where the enormous Redcar works are closed and gone. It was heart breaking to see the enormous blast furnace blown up in recent times, lying on its side. It was the state of the art in steelmaking in the late 1970s. Site now being sold off, in theory as Teesside Freeport, yet we found at the end of the South Gare, there are still the small fishermen’s huts, but fewer fishermen. We used to take picnics to the empty beaches in that area and could hear the roar of the blast furnace and other industrial plants. It was John’s workplace for 10 years as he was initially environment manager for General Steels Division of British Steel, finally was Head of Environment for the Corporation; that is until head of Engineering told John that Mrs Thatcher had announced and instructed him that British Steel would renege on every legal undertaking on Environmental Improvement promised to the Alkali Inspectorate etc and John would implement it; he came home and announced we would be moving…..he thought it too important an issue to renege.
Shared experiences:
So, what is nostalgia? Taking the trip down to the South Gare past Warrenby and the picture illustrates what we were faced with as a reminder of what was there, a sad sight of what was one of the biggest blast furnaces in Europe. What amazed us most was the sight of more than 100 mobile homes (campervans) parked at the South Gare and presumably used by workers on Teesside on short term contracts.
“We cannot go back to then” a friend who worked with John wrote after seeing the photo of the blown-up blast furnace “I’m reminded of some words in a book by W H Hudson ‘Afoot in England’ where he gives strong advice on not revisiting places where there was a very good previous experience. Although he’s not talking about quite the same scenario as our revisit to Redcar, his words are always brought to mind when I’m thinking of going back to somewhere because it was so good there perhaps a long while ago. But places change, especially if a few decades have passed, and the result can be disappointing or even depressing.”
We then visited Middlesbrough, some shiny new but unimpressive buildings but the wonderful Transporter Bridge is still there over the river Tees but sadly no longer working. Our young children loved it in the 1970’s as the cars were on a platform swinging under the bridge. It is hoped, so a local told me, that it is to be repaired after the Town Hall is renovated. A wonder of early 20th century engineering it is Grade 2* listed and the longest existing transporter in the world. It is the furthest downstream bridge crossing over the river Tees, the road between Middlesbrough and Hartlepool. When working, it carries a travelling platform, or ‘gondola’, suspended below the fixed structure, across the river in 90 seconds. The gondola can carry 200 people, 9 cars, or 6 cars and one minibus. The idea of a transporter bridge across the Tees was first mooted in 1872 when Charles Smith, Manager of the Hartlepool Iron Works, submitted a scheme to Middlesbrough Corporation. However, the scheme was not pursued, and it would not be until the new century that the idea of a transporter bridge across the river would again be revisited. Following a 1907 Act of Parliament the Bridge was built at a cost of £68,026 6s 8d (equivalent to £7,660,000 in 2021 values), by Sir William Arrol & Co. of Glasgow between 1910 and 1911 to replace the ‘Hugh Bell’ and ‘Erimus’ steam ferry services. A transporter bridge was chosen because Parliament ruled that the new scheme of crossing the river had to avoid affecting the river navigation.
The gondola c.1911 
The gondola c.2008 
Construction work started in July 1909 and the formal laying of the foundation stones, made of Aberdeen granite, took place in August 1910 and the opening ceremony was on 17 October 1911. It is a beautiful structure and so glad it is still there.
The Evolution of Nostalgia in Britain 1979-2019 (Heath et. al. 2022) uses the British Election Surveys from 1979 to 2019, together with the 2016–2019 CSI Brexit online panel, to explore how nostalgia has changed over time. The interpretation of the data is that there was a shift in the content of nostalgia from regret about the decline of traditional ways of life and family values toward regret over the rise of inequality and the emergence of social media. At the same time, it was found a continuity in the kinds of people who are likely to feel nostalgic: they tend to be members of older generations and to be less well educated (which we take as a proxy for being “left behind” culturally and economically). In Nationalism and the Politics of Nostalgia (Egenius and Rydgren, 2022) the politics of nostalgia is described as being used by political parties and movements on the right and left and fills similar functions, that is, making references to the past suitable for serving the political present. Different contents are used differentially depending on the ideology of the political actors and related golden ages. As a rule, nostalgic content indirectly describes a past that is “better” or even morally superior to the present. Moreover, the differential use of nostalgia can also be linked to the classical distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. The politics of nostalgia has been described as “a whitewashed past, a glorious era that everyone can rally around”.
We cannot go back other than in our inner thoughts and feelings. Things and people, places and countryside change. More cars, less green space, more housing estates, memory will play tricks too. But reliving the memory of fun, learning and living through our lives is rewarding too. And some changes are for the good or necessary for everyone. But sometimes hard to see and experience especially living through our new digital world.
References:
Elgenius,G and Rydgren, J. (2022) Nationalism and the Politics of Nostalgia
First published: 06 September 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12836
Heath, A, Richards L, Jungblut, J (2022) The Evolution of Nostalgia in Britain 1979–2019. First published: 18 August 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12840
Hudson, W. H, (1907) Afoot in England. This edition 2010 Beaufoy Books and Edward Stanford Ltd
Sally Campbell
June 2023
Featured image shows The Transporter Bridge, Middlesbrough 2023 photo John Campbell. Something worth keeping!
