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Reclining goddess or Slag Alice?

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Hob H
Hob Jul 28, 2011 22:30:18
Replying to Littlestone

Bah. I was up that way earlier today as it happens. Opencast in Northumberland is ghastly. Opencast is ghastly. Full stop.

It was fairly obvious from the start that this project was an attempted sweetener to alleviate some local objections to the original application for extraction at the site. The Ridley*s are nothing if not smart thinkers. It's since been used as both a carrot and a stick. The stick part being rumours that the sculpture was not going to go ahead for financial reasons. I suspect that in actuality this was more connected to it being the time when Banks were in pre-application discussions with the council about enlarging the extraction site. I.e. "Let us expand the opencast, else we'll not make enough profit to justify spending all that money on fancy landscaping." The extension has now been approved, so apparently the project is back on again. Evidence of this (with pictures) can be seen here:
http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=2f1d88ba-3443-4411-8cd6-dd514e2e9a77&version=-1
and the most recent is here:
http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=76af88a3-c783-4085-9eb0-d1d9de4c683e&version=-1
These being the two most recent of Northumberland Council's site monitoring reports.

There seems to be some problem with the contouring of part of the sculpture. In other words, if the council don't keep a very close eye on the proceedings, it'll potentially end up looking nothing like those nice crispy computer generated images in the promotional blurb.

And that's my concern. Apart from the fact that I'd much rather that She Who's Name Shall Not Be Spoken had not destroyed the mining industry in the 80's and hence opencast wasn't an option, I reckon the whole thing might end up looking like neither nowt nor summat.

This part of the world has many heaps. I used to live right next to one when I was a kid and it was a great pile of flame spouting shale, coal and methane, surrounded by farmland. Now it is a nice oasis of greenery, with owls, bats, the ocasional deer, all surrounded by housing and the metal sheds of run down industrial estates. But it still changes shape. The houses below it split apart when they were first built, as the shifting millions of tons mucked about with the water table and nudged the topsoil, and compacted the subsoil. There was a football pitch that over a few years turned into replica ridge and furrow. I recall this clearly, as I lived in one of those houses and, at risk of sounding Pythonesque, we thought ourselves lucky that we just had a 2 inch crack below a window and a very leaky roof. And it wasn't just shoddy builders, as (and this is Pythonesque), the houses down the street sank into a swamp before they were finished. So they built another set of foundations, and they sank into the swamp. But the third ones stayed aboveground, as they were placed on a massive concrete raft.

I'm digressing I know, but the point I'm getting at is that the merits of the Northumberlandia (stupid name...) project are solely based on the thing actually looking like a recumbent figure. But without a fairly hefty does of structural integrity, it'll look vaguely like the plans for a few years, but then eventually, the shale and soil will do what the shale and soil want to do, and the whole thing will be a mess. I reckon one of the main reasons these places end up with the water features isn't just that it's cheaper, it's also to give a margin of fuck-up to water tables and ground surfaces.

So yeah, it's a nice idea in theory, but the bottom line for me is: "Don't arse about with the landscape please. It knows what it's doing. Humans don't."

*A surname associated with families of notorious sheep-stealing squatters during the middle ages.

T tjj
tjj Jul 28, 2011 22:55:42
Replying to Hob

Thank you for your post Hob, straight from the horse's mouth as it were. I did see some open cast mines sites on the outskirts of Newcastle when I was up there for a few days in May. Was very impressed with much of Newcastle - loved the Metro, the art galleries, Jesmond Dene and most of all the people. Hope they get something worthwhile at the end of the day.

N nigelswift
nigelswift Jul 29, 2011 06:56:21
Replying to Hob

Nice one Mr Hob!
(How are you then?)

Open cast is ghastly. Full stop.

That's what people next to open cast operations always think, without fail, it feels like the rape of your land and community by people living hundreds of miles away and you're in no mood to see any upside so it's a cert that the yadder yadder about the benefits of the subsequent water parks etc doesn't come from them. And as for going a step beyond the water park thing and making the slag heap into a fat lass, well I guarantee no-one truly local is lobbying for it. If scores of your childhood fields had been destroyed why would you want the perpetrators to try to come out of it smelling of roses and community benefactors? Or to compulsorily patronise you?

As for it retaining it's crispness, 'course it won't. Slag, grass and scrub ain't granite. But then, it was hardly intended to last a long time, given why it was commissioned.

PS, the name Northumberlandia that you don't like - doesn't it sound exactly like the sort of name that would be dreamed up in a trendy West End PR firm? "What will appeal to the Northern yokels?" ;)

L Littlestone
Littlestone Jul 29, 2011 09:32:32
Replying to Hob

Hob wrote:
Bah. I was up that way earlier today as it happens. Opencast in Northumberland is ghastly. Opencast is ghastly. Full stop.

It was fairly obvious from the start that this project was an attempted sweetener to alleviate some local objections to the original application for extraction at the site. The Ridley*s are nothing if not smart thinkers. It's since been used as both a carrot and a stick. The stick part being rumours that the sculpture was not going to go ahead for financial reasons. I suspect that in actuality this was more connected to it being the time when Banks were in pre-application discussions with the council about enlarging the extraction site. I.e. "Let us expand the opencast, else we'll not make enough profit to justify spending all that money on fancy landscaping." The extension has now been approved, so apparently the project is back on again. Evidence of this (with pictures) can be seen here:
http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=2f1d88ba-3443-4411-8cd6-dd514e2e9a77&version=-1
and the most recent is here:
http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=76af88a3-c783-4085-9eb0-d1d9de4c683e&version=-1
These being the two most recent of Northumberland Council's site monitoring reports.

There seems to be some problem with the contouring of part of the sculpture. In other words, if the council don't keep a very close eye on the proceedings, it'll potentially end up looking nothing like those nice crispy computer generated images in the promotional blurb.

And that's my concern. Apart from the fact that I'd much rather that She Who's Name Shall Not Be Spoken had not destroyed the mining industry in the 80's and hence opencast wasn't an option, I reckon the whole thing might end up looking like neither nowt nor summat.

This part of the world has many heaps. I used to live right next to one when I was a kid and it was a great pile of flame spouting shale, coal and methane, surrounded by farmland. Now it is a nice oasis of greenery, with owls, bats, the ocasional deer, all surrounded by housing and the metal sheds of run down industrial estates. But it still changes shape. The houses below it split apart when they were first built, as the shifting millions of tons mucked about with the water table and nudged the topsoil, and compacted the subsoil. There was a football pitch that over a few years turned into replica ridge and furrow. I recall this clearly, as I lived in one of those houses and, at risk of sounding Pythonesque, we thought ourselves lucky that we just had a 2 inch crack below a window and a very leaky roof. And it wasn't just shoddy builders, as (and this is Pythonesque), the houses down the street sank into a swamp before they were finished. So they built another set of foundations, and they sank into the swamp. But the third ones stayed aboveground, as they were placed on a massive concrete raft.

I'm digressing I know, but the point I'm getting at is that the merits of the Northumberlandia (stupid name...) project are solely based on the thing actually looking like a recumbent figure. But without a fairly hefty does of structural integrity, it'll look vaguely like the plans for a few years, but then eventually, the shale and soil will do what the shale and soil want to do, and the whole thing will be a mess. I reckon one of the main reasons these places end up with the water features isn't just that it's cheaper, it's also to give a margin of fuck-up to water tables and ground surfaces.

So yeah, it's a nice idea in theory, but the bottom line for me is: "Don't arse about with the landscape please. It knows what it's doing. Humans don't."

*A surname associated with families of notorious sheep-stealing squatters during the middle ages.

A very fine comment Mr Hob (and Nigel) summed up perfectly in your line - "Don't arse about with the landscape please. It knows what it's doing. Humans don't."