Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality

197 Pages·2005·4.26 MB·English

by  Tim Edensor

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Industrial Ruins
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Industrial Ruins
Spaces,Aesthetics and Materiality
Tim Edensor
Oxford • New York
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First published in 2005 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Tim Edensor 2005
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Edensor, Tim, 1957-
Industrial ruins : spaces, aesthetics and materiality / Tim Edensor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-84520-077-2 (pbk.) –– ISBN 1-84520-076-4 (cloth)
1. Industrial archaeology. I. Title.
T37.E33 2005
711′.5524––dc22 2004028585
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13 978 184520 076 3 (Cloth)
ISBN-10 1 84520 076 4 (Cloth)
ISBN-13 978 184520 077 0 (Paper)
ISBN-10 1 84520 077 2 (Paper)
Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
www.bergpublishers.com
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
2 The Contemporary Uses of Industrial Ruins 21
Using Ruined Space
Plundering
Home-making
Adventuous play
Mundane leisure spaces / ruins as exemplary sites
Art space
Representing Ruin
Nature Reserves
Conclusion
3 Ruins and the Disordering of Space 53
Spatial Ordering and Disordering
Ruins and Their Phantom Networks
The Disorderly Aesthetics of Ruins
Performance and Sensation in Ruined Space
Conclusion
4 Materiality in the Ruin:Waste,Excess and Sensuality 97
Wasted Spaces and Things
Material Excess and the Recontextualisation of Objects
The Affordances of Ruined Things
Conclusion
5 The Spaces of Memory and the Ghosts of Dereliction 125
The Multiple Temporalities of Ruins
Theorising Memory in Space
The Allegorical Resonances of Ruins
Ruins and Involuntary Memories
The Ghosts of Ruins
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vi • Contents
6 Conclusion 165
Bibliography 173
Index 183
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Acknowledgements
This book has been a labour of love, an exciting adventure into some of the dark
and dank places of Britain. The numerous journeys have involved meeting and
staying with friends and colleagues, as well as encounters with numerous hotel
workers and the people who use ruins. The cost of these travels and the photo-
graphs that have been collected along the way have been supported by a generous
grant from the British Academy. The efficiency of the excellent staff at Berg is sim-
ilarly appreciated. In addition, as part of the process of thinking through some of
the ideas in this book, I have presented material on ruins at a variety of conferences
and seminars. I would like to thank Andrew Blaikie, Dydia de Lyser and Gillian
Rose for inviting me to present papers, and particularly Karen Till for organising
a very stimulating and enjoyable few days in Minneapolis, along with Alan
Organschi, Thomas Lahusen and the staff and students who came along. In helping
me produce a website and the photographs which illustrate it and this book, I am
extremely grateful for the technical expertise and patience provided by Michael
Cheung, Abid Qayum, Helen Brown, Albert Bowyer and Charlie. In addition, I
give humble thanks to my colleagues at Staffordshire University, including David
Bell, Tracey Potts, Maggie O’Neill, Gary Kelsall and Andrew Conroy who have
supported me in my work, as well as the many graduate and postgraduate students
who have had to listen to me blethering on about ruins. I have several exciting
escapades and shared ideas with fellow ruin enthusiasts Caitlin Desilvey and
David Papadopoulos, and I thank them for their great company and insights.
Finally, as usual, all these travels would not have been possible without the for-
bearance and encouragement of Uma, Jay, Kim, Ji and Rosemary.
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–1–
Introduction
As a young boy on long summer visits to my grandparents’cottage in Scotland, a
particular ruin exerted a magnetic attraction for me. At the top of the steep, tree-
lined country lane which led away from the cottage lay an area of extensive beech
woodland. Nestling amidst the trees was a building known locally as the Haunted
House, an imposing building designed in the Scottish baronial style that had lain
derelict for years and was now the domain of owls, jackdaws and rabbits. It was
crumbling and unstable, but I and my siblings ignored the barbed wire and the
notices that warned of danger, and explored the remnants of parlour and dining
hall that were now strewn with rubble. There was not much left of the building,
few nooks and crannies or spaces that were not open to the sky, but at the back of
the dwelling was a sumptuous wood with a collection of ornamental gateposts and
a well; a wood that was the occasional venue for youths from the nearby village to
carve their names on trees and drink cans of beer. The haunted house was part of
a large estate that had been developed by a hugely wealthy rubber baron in the
early years of the twentieth century. If you followed the road that skirted the wood,
you came to the gatehouse, no modest lodge but itself a grand and exotic building
which was the only inhabited part of the estate. Here lived an ancient woman who
took it upon herself to maintain the estate to some degree and try to ensure that, as
the signs warned, trespassers would indeed be prosecuted. With her dogs and a par-
ticularly vicious goose, she patrolled the estate in an archaic automobile, whistle
at the ready to summon help and frighten intruders, especially children.
The wood adjacent to the haunted house was our way into the estate, and more
importantly, to the gigantic mansion that lay in the middle of the policies. The
rubber baron had gone bankrupt as his estate neared completion, and whilst the
haunted house and gatehouse had been completed, the big house had not been fin-
ished inside and was bereft of plaster and furnishings, remaining thus for decades.
It was this mansion that drew me towards it on most of those holiday days, despite
the added fear of capture by the elderly crone or perhaps also partly because of
that. A half-mile walk through the woods led to a steep decline through thick
1
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2 • Industrial Ruins
woodland and undergrowth where the big house lay. The mogul had built extensive
ornamental gardens surrounding the house which, together with the buildings and
stone furniture, were designed to appear far older than was the case. A walled
garden contained a fountain guarded on four sides by stone lions, and grass grew
in its bowl, although if the spring was especially wet, frogspawn would collect in
the murky water trapped there. The fountain was etched with rather morbid
inscriptions: ‘Yesterday returneth not’. Tomorrow perchance, cometh not’. ‘Today
is thine, misuse it not’. Occasionally, exotic blooms would force their way through
the dense undergrowth and provide a splash of bright colour. At one corner of the
walled garden was a favourite haunt, a gazebo, which acted as a hide from which
deer, woodpeckers and other wildlife could often be seen, for the estate had
become an unofficial nature reserve. From this point, a stone balustrade led to the
woodland paths, paved but largely covered now with moss and a thick mulch of
pine needles. The paths had been bordered with yew and pine hedges but in the
decades following the laying of the garden, these had grown and formed an