Photographs

In his grand tour of the mainland of Great Britain in 1985, JMW took 700 colour slides of vanishing urban life. Two are featured here:

1, Savile Road, Sheffield. The giant Firth steel factory walls were being razed by demolition crews as the industry retrenched in 1985 South Yorkshire. The plant ran the length of the street and this image is indicative of the pall of gloom then hanging over Sheffield replacing the pall of smoke produced when the steel furnaces were working full stretch when JMW was a lad travelling there by train from Mansfield.

2,  Broad Street Station, City. Railway lines from the northern suburbs ran into Broad Street Station for decades from its opening in 1865. Before the expansion of the tube system, it was the third busiest terminus after next-door Liverpool Street and Victoria. Here is Broad Street just before the developers had it demolished and replaced by the Broadgate Centre, an area of City office blocks. The last train left Broad Street in 1986. Many services were rerouted to Liverpool Street and others were abandoned.