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Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Das Naturreich / Buch-Reihe
Eine Sammlung naturwissenschaftlicher Bücher für Schule und Haus
herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Bastian Schmid
> Dr. Karl Schulz / Das Mineralreich
Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Verbreitung, Gewinnung und Verwertung der Mineralien
Pestalozzi Verlags-Anstalt / Wiesbaden 1923
ex libris MTP
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinkohle#Einteilung
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunkohle
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Graceville Railway Station is located approximately nine and a half kilometres outbound on the Brisbane-Ipswich line (completed in 1875), one of seven rail lines radiating from the Brisbane central business district to serve the passenger, coal and freight markets of south-east Queensland. The station was established in 1884 to service new residential subdivisions, and had gained its current format by 1958 - 1959. It services the south-west commuter suburb of Graceville and comprises two island platforms with a butterfly-roofed station building of brick and concrete, four steel and timber platform awnings, and a subway system linking the leafy suburb on both sides of the tracks. It was one of a suite of station fit-outs carried out from the early 1950s and into the 1960s in anticipation of the electrification and quadruplication of the rail lines between Nundah and Corinda, and stands out as the first one completed, the most successful resolution of the design themes explored by the Railway Department's architects, and the most intact.
The passing of the Railway Act in 1863 initiated the era of state government owned and operated railways. The first such rail line between Ipswich and Grandchester was built in 1865, being part of a four-stage project that linked to Toowoomba in 1867, Dalby in 1868, and then to Warwick in 1871. In August 1872 Parliament approved the construction the Brisbane railway, but only from Ipswich to Oxley. A survey was required to select the appropriate site for a bridge over the Brisbane River and Oxley Point (now Chelmer) was chosen. On the 5th of October 1874 the line from Ipswich to Oxley West (now Sherwood) opened. It was extended to Oxley Point early the following year with a ferry transporting passengers across the river until the Albert Bridge, named after Queen Victoria's Consort, was opened on the 5th of July 1876 allowing a connection to the newly completed Indooroopilly line.
The areas now known as Chelmer, Graceville, Sherwood, and Corinda had been part of Boyland's Pocket, a colonial leasehold estate running sheep and cattle. After 1859 the area was subdivided into farms where various crops were grown. Cotton was attempted in the 1860s and sugar cane was grown in the 1860s and 1870s. When the railway was completed to Oxley Point in 1875, the only station between the river and Oxley was Oxley West (Sherwood). The suburban subdivision of Oxley Point began in the building boom of the 1880s and by November 1884 a railway station was operational at Graceville. The Railways Department had asked Samuel Grimes, the MLA for Oxley at the time, to name the station and he suggested one incorporating that of his baby daughter, Grace.
The process of expanding the function of the western line began in 1884. Duplication from Indooroopilly to Oxley was completed in June 1886 and extended to Ipswich by the 28th of March 1887. A shelter shed was constructed at the Graceville Station circa 1892. Land adjacent to the station was subdivided and auctioned on the 21st of November 1895 as Oatlands Estate; it comprised 16 perch allotments to the north of Verney Road on either side of the rail line. In 1897 a contract was let to build overbridges to Sherwood, Chelmer, and Graceville Stations.
A further suburban subdivision known as Graceville Estate was offered for sale in 1911 on the eastern side of the station along Verney Road. By January 1916 the level crossing dividing this roadway was eliminated and a new station was constructed in March incorporating overhead bridge access. Graceville continued to grow as a small suburban community through the interwar years. Its recreation reserve, which had been gazetted in 1904, became the site of the Graceville War Memorial, unveiled in 1929. Electricity was connected in 1920 and a picture theatre opened the following year near the station on Honour Avenue. A Progress Association formed, and the first Agricultural Show was held in 1921. In 1924, six shops, the Central Buildings, were built by Walter Taylor on Honour Avenue between Verney Road West and Rakeevan Road. He was also a driving force behind the building of the pre-cast concrete Uniting Church building on Oxley Road in 1930. A state school opened in 1928 and a Catholic school in 1937.
In 1946 a Commission of Enquiry into the Electrification of the Brisbane Suburban Railway System was held and its 1947 report recommended the installation of a similar electric rail system to Sydney and Melbourne. It was argued that electrification would provide a faster, cleaner service and would eventually lead to the settlement of the outer suburbs. In February 1949 approval was given to electrify the Brisbane suburban railway system at an estimated cost £5,888,000. Planning began in February 1950. The project included an upgrade of stations, platforms, the signalling system between Corinda and Northgate and the provision of subways at some stations. Subways were installed to avoid overhead bridges in the vicinity of power lines. The quadruplication of the line from Corinda to Virginia was necessary, with or without the electrification process, because both incorporated important freight lines; Virginia on the main northern line and Corinda on the main western line. The survey between Virginia and Corinda was completed by June 1950. The quadruplication was later extended to Zillmere.
In 1957 Queensland's new Country-Liberal government under Frank Nicklin commissioned consultants Ford, Bacon, and Davis to report on the Railway Department's efficiency, facilities, and operations. Their recommendations were numerous, and included a total abandonment of electrification in favour of dieselisation, and steam engines were phased out from 1960.
The quadruplication project, however, was continued. Track layouts were produced by the Permanent Way and Works team, Graceville being drawn in 1955. To accommodate the new works at this station, a number of partial resumptions were undertaken in Appel Street, where two houses and the house/shop on the corner of Verney Avenue were moved east on their allotments. Railway plans indicate a very busy shopping precinct along the opposite roadway, Honour Avenue. The new station layout allowed for one wide suburban island platform, on which a new station building and two awnings with integral seating were to be built, and one narrow main-line island platform, which was to house two awnings with more integral seating. The station structures were designed to fit the layouts.
During this time the Queensland Railways architect's office was experimenting with modernist designs for the department's buildings and awnings, being influenced by architectural trends coming from Britain, Europe, and the United States. There had been not only an influential pre-war migration of European architects to Queensland - professionals like Karl Langer who occupied a role with the railways from 1939 until 1946 - but also a post-war flow of architects from Britain and Europe who came to the State in search of work and brought with them the architectural ideas and training that were driving forward the large task of post-war reconstruction and housing provision being undertaken in their countries of origin.
Under Principal Railway Architect John Sydney Egan, new station designs were prepared for the quadruplication project. An overall concept for the form and structure of the station buildings was established, but the designs were non-standardised, and took account of platform width, which varied from station to station. Architect Jan Kral was responsible for the Graceville and Chelmer designs and signed-off on the drawings for Sherwood station as Acting Principal Architect. He was born in Poland and studied at Stuttgart University after the war. He came to Australia in 1950 and was employed by the Queensland Railways the following year, initially as a draftsman, becoming a Senior Architect by 1958. While the designs were all somewhat different, they shared a form derived from a long, thin building, rectangular in plan and made with a regular procession of columns, surmounted by a butterfly roof that cantilevered over each platform side to shelter waiting and alighting rail passengers. A number of standardised plans for Railways Department butterfly-roofed awnings were developed and used between 1949 and 1960, many having been designed by Bevis Thelwall. A common palette of materials including reinforced concrete, steel and exposed brickwork was used. The steel work was all prefabricated at the Northgate workshops. Graceville Station was the first of these station fit-outs to be completed within the quadruplication project between Corinda and Roma Street.
The main building at Graceville had a butterfly roof formed with a reinforced concrete slab lined with bituminous felt and supported on ten pre-cast, reinforced concrete beams that cantilevered off a continuous lintel resting on ten brick piers. A range of materials were used to fill the gaps between the brick frame: including orange-coloured face brick, screened openings, some small sections of render and various aluminium-framed windows. On either side of this building, two wide butterfly-roofed, steel-framed shelters with built-in seating were erected. Each was made up of four sets of steel columns and cantilevered steel tapering I-beams bolted together. The seating, made with timber slats and a steel and timber frame, was placed back-to-back facing each track. Dividing each row of seating were metal ribbed screens. Fitted to each steel column and under each beam were panels framed in steel and filled with glass above the seat level and sheet steel below. The other narrower platform necessitated smaller butterfly-roofed awnings be built there. They were essentially the same construction as the larger ones with only three bays, two of which were given over to seating. The subway system with its street ramps and stairs to both platforms was constructed with reinforced concrete.
In June 1958 the Commissioner reported that new concrete and brick station buildings were under construction at Sherwood, Graceville, Chelmer, Indooroopilly, and Auchenflower, and subways were completed or under construction at Graceville, Chelmer, Taringa, and Nundah. The Graceville complex of station buildings, awnings, and subway, and enlarged and raised platforms at a cost of £16,686, was the first of these new stations to open in mid-1959. Chelmer, with an identical layout of one building and four awnings, all butterfly-roofed, opened shortly afterwards. Milton, also drawn by Jan Kral was built in 1960.
At the time of its completion in mid-1959, Graceville Station featured in a number of local newspaper articles where it was described as one of the most modern in Australia. The Commissioner also chose to feature a photograph of it in his annual report. Architect John Egan published an article on the new station designs in the Architecture in Australia journal in June 1961.
All the new station buildings constructed in the 1950s and early 1960s for the quadruplication and electrification projects employed a Modernist idiom, but only the platform stations at Graceville (1959) and Chelmer (1959) on the Corinda line, and at Nundah (1960) and Eagle Junction (1963) on the northern line, were designed with butterfly roofs. Similarly designed, but with flat roof profiles were Sherwood (1960), Indooroopilly (late 1950s), Toowong (1960) and Milton (1960). Taringa (mid-1950s), Toombul (1960) and Wooloowin (1960) were butterfly-roofed overhead stations; Corinda (1960) was a flat-roofed overhead station; and Auchenflower (1960) was a skillion-roofed overhead station. A standard plan was drawn up for Nundah and Graceville in 1955, but only Graceville and Chelmer were later constructed with the same pitch to their butterfly roofs. Nundah was given a flatter roof made with steel framing rather than reinforced concrete.
In September 1960, the quadruplication project was suspended on the northern line. Work continued between Roma Street and Corinda as the signalling contract had been already let. The northern line stations of Nundah and Toombul were constructed within this time frame, and Eagle Junction shortly after. The quadruplicated Corinda to Roma Street line opened on the 1st of December 1963, providing greater flexibility in the provision of peak hour suburban services and allowing the passage of long distance goods and livestock trains which travelled through these suburban networks to the main western line.
During the 1960s a number of rail lines were decommissioned as government funds were geared towards the provision of better roads, but by the end of that decade, it was clear that public transport also needed to be upgraded. A report delivered in 1970 recommended the electrification of the suburban railway network, the construction of the Merivale Street Bridge and a range of operational improvements, including the creation of a separate public transport authority. By the 8th of May 1979 the overhead lines between Corinda and Roma Street were switched on as part of the electrification project between Darra and Ferny Grove, which was the first section of the suburban network to be completed.
Alterations to the various elements of Graceville railway station have been minimal since its completion in 1959. Changes to the building include carpeting of the office floor, the addition of safety screens to the openings above the stairway and further enclosure of what was the telephone booth at the southern end. The steel-framed awnings originally had ribbed panels dividing the two sides of the timber seating, which have now been removed, as have those panels which divided the various seating bays. Graceville, Chelmer, and Sherwood stations were repainted in 1998 with only the former being painted the corporate Queensland Rail colours of maroon and grey. Various ticket machines, a telephone, and other signs have been added.
Of the thirteen stations designed and built in the 1950s and early 1960s as part of the original Queensland Railways electrification and quadruplication projects, Graceville, which remains substantially intact, best exemplifies the Modernist-influenced design concepts employed. It is the most intact of the four butterfly-roofed platform stations, with Chelmer having been altered somewhat, and Eagle Junction and Nundah altered substantially. Of the four flat-roofed platform stations Sherwood has been altered partially, Milton has been altered substantially, and Indooroopilly and Toowong have been rebuilt. Of the five over-head stations, Auchenflower and Taringa remain the more intact, Corinda and Wooloowin have been altered substantially, and Toombul has been rebuilt.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Coke is a solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low sulfur bituminous coal (black coal). Coke from coal is grey, hard and porous. Coke can be used as a fuel or as a reducing agent in blast furnaces used for smelting of iron ore.
A line of enormous columns at the Colorado National Monument reminded people of coke ovens, which turned bituminous coal into coke, a solid, carbon rich material once considered to be superior to charcoal.
The Book Cliffs in the distance form an unbroken line from Grand Junction, CO to Green River, UT.
Taken from the upper portion of Ancient Delphi's Theater, and looking southeastward.
How my old and humble photos could possibly do justice to the locale the ancient Greeks considered the center of the Earth, I do not know. But I have to try to present a few interesting aspects. Right off the bat, I can say I have never visited any more awe-inspiring landscape in the Old World.
Recognized as a place of numinous power since at least the Bronze Age, Delphi began as a site sacred to Gaia (Ge, Gaea), the great Earth Mother. Later that deity was mostly supplanted by Apollo, whose temple is marked by the columns at bottom.
There, in the inner sanctum, the Pythia, a priestess endowed with the god's own foresight, sat on her tripod and provided supplicants with oracular answers. To get in the mood, so to speak, she reportedly chewed laurel leaves and inhaled the vapors issuing from a chasm in the limestone bedrock.
Generations of archaeologists have argued about whether the fume-generating fissure was really ever there. One scientific paper I've read suggests that both carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide may have been produced from nearby bituminous strata. But the latter gas, which produces that loathsome rotten-eggs stink, is so toxic I can't imagine any prophesying priestess lasting very long. Talk about an unsafe workplace.
This photo and the rest of this set were taken on a misty, early-March day when the Almond Trees (Prunus dulcis) were already blooming merrily away. They will be more visible in the shots that follow.
Despite the low and milky haze, this view offers a good look at the access road that connects this renowned archaeological site with Thebes in Boeotia, some 70 km / 44 mi to the east-southeast as the crow (a bird associated with Apollo) flies. Like Delphi itself, the roadway is perched on the southern slope of the huge Mount Parnassus massif. More on that later.
The scenic, steep-walled gorge below us is that of the Pleistos River, which flows into the Gulf of Corinth at Kirra (about 7 km / 4.4 mi to the right and southwest of this frame). This is a genuine, fault-controlled rift valley that parallels the much larger Corinth-Saronic graben. Both of these down-dropped blocks are a sign of the extensional tectonics that are going on, as the Peloponnesus is being pulled away from mainland Greece.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this series, visit my Geology (Architectural & Otherwise) of the Earth's Center album.
The road less travelled is closer to the edge.
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©2014 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
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Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
The Martin Marietta Cement Plant in Midlothian, Texas creates fuel blending of high BTU bulk liquid waste for energy recovery in one of the 4 clinker wet production kilns. The rotary cement kilns are permitted to be fueled by bituminous coal, fuel oil, petroleum coke and natural gas. Most of the wastes burned in the facility's kilns are generated offsite and are transported to the facility in tanker trucks, tanker trailers, and rail cars. The latter being represented by this UP unit coke train working its way east along the coast.
Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Heavily rusted remains of the "SS LAWRENCE"
The "LAWRENCE" was a 160ft.two-masted twin-screw iron steamer. She was built in 1884 by Kish, Boolds & Co. of Sunderland, England, and launched originally as "BORTONIUS".
The following year, coal was discovered in the tiny West Coast hamlet of Mokihinui (the first high-grade bituminous coal to be mined in New Zealand), and the Mokihinui Coal Company was established. A second coal seam was soon found, even larger than the first, and in 1889 the flourishing business purchased the LAWRENCE [victoriancollections.net.au/items/555577b3998fc21654210829].
Good fortune continued to smile on the young company, and in early 1891 it won a contract to supply coal to the NZ Railways.
But the good fortune ran out on April 28, 1891. From the up-river wharf where the Mokihinui Coal Co.’s one-mile tramway delivered the coal from the mines, the LAWRENCE set sail at about noon. She became lodged in the sandbar at the river mouth, managed to break free but, owing to her damaged propeller blades, she then drifted onto the beach. The next day she broke her back in heavy weather and was declared a total loss [paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT18910430.2.22].
As the LAWRENCE was its only ship, the Mokihinui Coal Co. was subsequently forced to hand over its newly-acquired rail contract to the Grey Valley Coal Company...
==========
In 1935 a ship’s bell was found near Westport, about 40km south of the Mokihinui River. It caused considerable local speculation because, at first, no-one recognised the name inscribed on the bell: BORTONIUS.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
66151 waits at Cwmbargoed for the 6C94 14:00 departure to Margam with around 1500 tonnes of bituminous coal that will be used at Port Talbot steel works. An interesting point: The steel industry heavily depends on coal to fuel its energy intensive processes. To put this in context, for every 1¼ tonnes of steel produced, one tonne of coal is required. Such is the demand, in 2019 alone, the UK and European steel-making industry imported some 52 million tonnes of seaborne metallurgical coal from the United States of America, Australia, Russia and Columbia. There is currently no substitute for coal in steel making - electric fired blast furnaces can only be used to recycle steel. Demand for coal in UK is between 5 – 6 million tonnes per annum to supply a range of essential industries, including steel and cement manufacturing.
Future coal mining applications are set to be rejected as a matter of policy for the first time in Wales, in pursuit of cleaner energy. Operations at Cwmbargoed are scheduled to stop in 2022 so one wonders what will happen to the operation in light of this policy.
Many thanks to Justin Desrosiers for inspiring and leading me to this spot. Thanks man! Follow Justin here: www.flickr.com/photos/justind22/
March 1st, 2014
7:35AM and approximately 8 degrees fahrenheit
Taken from the Somerset side of the Taunton River
It was extremely cold for this sunrise shot this morning. But was able to capture the sun rising over my hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. I did some shot under the Charles M. Braga, Jr. Memorial Bridge from the Somerset side. Incredible view.
Did you know they are considering having the bridge illuminated at night? Info here: www.heraldnews.com/article/20140203/Opinion/140209234
Info on the Bridge:
Designer: 1965:E. Pichel, Inc. consult. engr.; 1989:Greiner Engineering Sciences, Inc.;
Builder: 1965:Corbetta Const. Co., deck; American Bridge, superst.; Dravo Corp., substruct.; 1989:Cianbro;
Main Unit: # of Spans:3
Length of Each: 1 @ 840'; 2 @ 382';
Approaches: # of Spans: 24
Length of Each: 3 @ 145'; 12 @ 200'; 3 @ 165'; 3 @ 167'; 1 @ 186'; 1 @ 160';
Structure Type:
The main bridge is a 3-span continuous riveted steel through truss, a single intersection Warren with verticals; cast-in-place concrete deck. The approach spans are continuous riveted plate girders.
The 1989 rehabilitation included the replacement of the existing concrete deck with a lightweight concrete deck overlain with bituminous concrete; New Jersey Barriers were added; steel was repaired as needed.
History of Bridge:
I-195 was planned in the early 1960's as a way of providing interstate access to the communities of southeastern Massachusetts that lie along Buzzard's Bay, including the cities of New Bedford and Fall River. The biggest obstacle to this planned road was the Taunton River, which, at the planned location of I-195, is a very busy shipping channel, with large ocean going vessels needing access to docks along the Fall River waterfront. Because of this, all existing bridges over the Taunton River between Fall River and Somerset are movable bridges. Since a movable bridge was not desirable on an interstate, a high level crossing was required. This resulted in the design and construction of the Braga bridge, with the middle span of the through truss spanning over the 400 foot shipping channel and providing a clearance of 135 feet over mean high water.
Significance of Bridge
It is the youngest of 14 single intersection Warren through trusses and the youngest of 10 continuous truss bridges identified in the MassHighway database. Its main span, at 840 feet, is the longest single span of any bridge in the database.
SOURCE: www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=bridge/braga&sid...
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Whitewood is a closed Albertan coal mine located just north of Lake Wabamun, about sixty-five kilometres west of Edmonton, Alberta. Owned by the TransAlta Corporation of Calgary, the mine was run by Luscar Ltd. (Edmonton) since that company acquired the extraction contract from Fording Coal Ltd. (Calgary) in 2003 until closure in 2010.
Opened in 1962, the Whitewood mine operated on a "strip" model, harvesting approximately 2.8 megatonnes of sub-bituminous coal per annum. Most of this thermal coal was used for steam-driven power generation at the Wabamun, Sundance, and Keephills power plants, but a small amount of coal was sold to the residents of Parkland County for personal uses.
The Whitewood mine covered approximately 4700 hectares of slightly hilly prairie, with locales of forest and wetland interspersed throughout. The 2,800,000 tonnes of coal mined there each year was enough fuel to fulfil approximately 13% of Alberta's electrical energy requirements. As a strip-surface mine, Whitewood employed the use of heavy equipment — excavators, loaders/shovels, dumpers, and the like — to extract the coal in an efficient and cost-sensible manner. Post-mining processing included pulverisation, to maximise thermal yields when the coal is burnt in one of the surrounding power stations.
Although the 2000s rate of extraction would have allowed the site's fifty-one million tonnes of reserves to be mined for more than a decade, TransAlta ceased production in 2010, the same year the company completed the decommissioning of its coal-fired Wabamun electrical generation facility nearby. The company continued mining coal at the massive Highvale mine five kilometres to the southwest; that mine produces 12.9 megatonnes of sub-bituminous coal per annum, has reserves pegged at over 200 megatonnes, and will be able to fuel the power plants now served by Whitewood, in addition to the Genesee power station.
Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.
In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.
DSCF4690
Germany’s lignite reserves are inexpensive to produce, making it one of the world’s largest lignite producers (20% of global output). Germany has the largest coal reserves in the EU, of which over 97 percent are lignite (brown coal), with the remainder being bituminous and anthracite (hard coal). According to the 2008 BP Statistical Energy Survey, Germany had end 2007 coal reserves of 6708 million tonnes. Germany is the seventh largest coal producer in the world, producing a total of 201.86 million tonnes of coal in 2007 while consuming 86.03 million tonnes oil equivalent. Germany is the world’s fourth largest coal consumer, importing the bulk of its coal from Poland, South Africa and Russia.
The Rhenish (Rhineland) lignite-mining region covers an area of around 2,500km² to the west of Cologne. RWE Power operates four large opencast mines in the district – Hambach, Garzweiler, Inden and Bergheim – which between them produced 96.2Mt of lignite in 2006. The brown coal industry is dominated by RAG Aktiengesellschaft and RWE Power. .
The Government of Germany announced in January 2007 that it planned to shut down its eight remaining black coal mines by 2018. This phase-out will be reviewed by parliament again in 2012 to see if its still makes economic sense. Seven of the remaining mines are in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to the Ruhr industrial region, and one is located in the small state of Saarland on the border with France. At present Germany's federal and regional governments subsidise coal mining by up to €2.5 billion a year and the deal ensures continued financial support for the sector until the last mine is closed. The plan does not affect Germany's brown coal mining sector which can produce coal more cheaply because it uses open-cast mines.
"Canada Action is an entirely volunteer created grassroots movement ... We’re strong supporters of Canada’s oil sands
and the resource sector ...."
-- More Canada Now. ca
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"Tar sands are saturated with a dense and extremely
viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen."
-- Wikipedia
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Around Ottawa you see copies of this sign
saying, "The World Needs More Canada."
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Last of its kind: Atlas No. 3 Mine sub-bituminous coal sorting and loading facility, built in 1936 and 210-foot high, is the last wooden 'tipple' still standing.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Coal_Mine
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Nikon Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX
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Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Kentucky / Tennessee state line downtown.
Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.
In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.
DSCF4700 R1
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.
In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.
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Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.
In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.
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This is "Waumbeck", the last of the coal fired steam locomotives making the trip up Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
Throughout our lives, hiking the southwestern flanks of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire was accompanied by the Mount Washington Cog Railway, originally started in 1869. There was no ignoring these beasts. With piercing steam whistle blasts and the clanking of the rails, hiking solitude was broken on a frequent basis. The most noteworthy part of the railway was the huge cloud of billowing, black smoke coming from the smokestack. And at any time, there could be three, four, five trains on the mountain at one time, and each train burned one ton of coal for the trip. If you hiked anywhere near the tracks, you'd often be enveloped in the choking black smoke.
Hikers came to nickname the train, "The Cumulus Bituminous."
No longer.
"Waumbeck" is the only coal train still running, and it only makes one trip up the mountain, the first of the day. All other trains running up and down the mountain are now powered by biodiesel fuel. (Now it'll smell like french fries, I suppose.) Although the venerable coal trains have long been a tradition on the mountain, I'm glad that we can all breathe easier now.
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To see this image larger, chug over to the Planes, Trains & Automobiles Gallery.
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Many thanks to Justin Desrosiers for inspiring and leading me to this spot. Thanks man! Follow Justin here: www.flickr.com/photos/justind22/
7:06AM and approximately 8 degrees fahrenheit
Taken from the Somerset side of the Taunton River
It was extremely cold for this sunrise shot this morning. But was able to capture the sun rising over my hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. I did some shot under the Charles M. Braga, Jr. Memorial Bridge from the Somerset side. Incredible view.
Did you know they are considering having the bridge illuminated at night? Info here: www.heraldnews.com/article/20140203/Opinion/140209234
Info on the Bridge:
Designer: 1965:E. Pichel, Inc. consult. engr.; 1989:Greiner Engineering Sciences, Inc.;
Builder: 1965:Corbetta Const. Co., deck; American Bridge, superst.; Dravo Corp., substruct.; 1989:Cianbro;
Main Unit: # of Spans:3
Length of Each: 1 @ 840'; 2 @ 382';
Approaches: # of Spans: 24
Length of Each: 3 @ 145'; 12 @ 200'; 3 @ 165'; 3 @ 167'; 1 @ 186'; 1 @ 160';
Structure Type:
The main bridge is a 3-span continuous riveted steel through truss, a single intersection Warren with verticals; cast-in-place concrete deck. The approach spans are continuous riveted plate girders.
The 1989 rehabilitation included the replacement of the existing concrete deck with a lightweight concrete deck overlain with bituminous concrete; New Jersey Barriers were added; steel was repaired as needed.
History of Bridge:
I-195 was planned in the early 1960's as a way of providing interstate access to the communities of southeastern Massachusetts that lie along Buzzard's Bay, including the cities of New Bedford and Fall River. The biggest obstacle to this planned road was the Taunton River, which, at the planned location of I-195, is a very busy shipping channel, with large ocean going vessels needing access to docks along the Fall River waterfront. Because of this, all existing bridges over the Taunton River between Fall River and Somerset are movable bridges. Since a movable bridge was not desirable on an interstate, a high level crossing was required. This resulted in the design and construction of the Braga bridge, with the middle span of the through truss spanning over the 400 foot shipping channel and providing a clearance of 135 feet over mean high water.
Significance of Bridge
It is the youngest of 14 single intersection Warren through trusses and the youngest of 10 continuous truss bridges identified in the MassHighway database. Its main span, at 840 feet, is the longest single span of any bridge in the database.
SOURCE: www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=bridge%2Fbraga&s...
The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new city Council and bears the name of its first Mayor. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking North and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.
The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.
Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The recently developed riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant, however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those enroute to the outstations at Cowper's (Coopers) Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.
On the 10th of February 1842, Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.
The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street circa 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865 - November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.
A burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.
The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The opening of the Brisbane-Ipswich railway in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.
The opening of the Victoria Bridge on the 15th of June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.
In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. A dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established circa 1885, and South Brisbane was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton reach.
The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on the 7th of January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and Railway Station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the Council to work out their rates. A series of floods in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Indooroopilly rail bridge in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on the 8th of February 1893 described the event as What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation.
Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin biscuit factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.
On the 3rd of October 1903, the Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross river communication.
In the immediate post-war period, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. The completion of the Sydney-Kyogle-South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the William Jolly Bridge, there was scant opposition.
By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 - 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 - 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and WJ Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.
The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on the 20th of May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on the 11th of January 1926 (chairman RWH Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, WN Nelson and R Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc, and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A crossing at Kangaroo Point was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from WJ Earle, the City Planner, and EF Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.
On the 7th of June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, it is interesting to note that Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the William Jolly Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated the 25th of June 1930.
The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on the 10th of July 1926. Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883 - 1952) was appointed Engineer on the 12th of November 1926.
Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14m to 23m on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost....The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern.
Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, Saint Paul Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland....The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future. The selected bridge design differed from the Saint Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the Saint Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.
The Council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, resumptions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.
Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on the 8th of May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.
An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.
An incident occurred on the 17th of February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the Press at the time.
As mentioned, the depth to rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them to rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893 - 1970).
The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 ft in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge. The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank, however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.
The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin and Co plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on the 5th of February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.
The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904 - 1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement-Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the Saint Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane.
The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the Council to utilise this portion of the Approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.
The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Co Ltd, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc, and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.
The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Co.
Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 ft with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.
The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on the 14th of November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.
The bridge was officially opened on the 30th of March 1932, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance. The bridge was named the Grey Street Bridge.
There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices, and the Central Railway Station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.
An unusual feature of the Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type, however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span to rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.
The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.
On the 5th of July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881 - 1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On the 21st of February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. JW Greene was in office when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the Council a charter which vested in the Council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street (William Jolly) Bridge, the new City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply, and sewerage.
Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.
Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.
The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.