Submitted by Victor1st Mornington on January 5, 2013 – 2:04pm
For about 3 months now, the chimney stack at Hawksley has stood out like an errant urchin defiantley shouting at everyone from miles around…
…i thought the height of that stack would prod people into making their own chimneys in the industrial sites of NB taller.. but it didnt, so im here to present my case.
The Hawksley Pump House stack looks big, but its to scale…
http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/default.aspx?pid=2&id=425398
You might all be thinking "Thats tooooo tall!" but look at this…
http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Atherton/images/Cotton2.jpg
Manchester early 1900’s http://m.gmgrd.co.uk/res/721.$plit/C_71_article_1592859_image_list_image_list_item_0_image.jpg
Wood carve print, London, 1890 http://l.yimg.com/ck/image/A1844/18445/470_18445.jpg
The average height of those chimneys, most of which was felled by the infamous Fred Dibnah by the 1960’s was 70 to 80m tall. The stack at Hawksley is just over 70m tall. By the time 1900 rolled in stacks of over 150m tall was being built.
Chimneys aint held together by the mortar, they are held together by gravity…tons, and tons of brick pressing down on each other. By the time Fred Dibnah felled a lot of those old 1890 and 1910 stacks the mortar was so loose he could take a hammer to it and chunks of the stuff would crumble into dust.
So, do you have an industrial building?
Have you got a big boiler driving machinery somewhere?
Take your existing chimney stack and stretch it up by about 20 to 30m…it will make a massive diffference to the skyline of New Babbage!
The Dream of the 1890s ›