WILD WORLD

“Conham has been restored to its pre-industrial, sylvan state as part of the Avon Valley Woodlands Nature Reserve, providing one of the most idyllic riverside walks in the area.”

The Avon Valley, Trooper's Hill, Netham and Conham were all once home to heavy industry. Now, they are “some of the most sublime and inspiring landscapes in the Bristol area”. Andrew Swift looks at how nature can reclaim even the most devastated industrial sites and return them to their natural glory

One of the most inspiring ecological books published in the last twelve months is Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment, which takes the reader on a series of journeys into some of the most devastated landscapes on earth. Flyn’s focus is not so much on the multifarious ways in which environmental destruction has been wrought, however, but on the ways in which nature has fought back.

Most of the sites visited, such as the Chernobyl exclusion zone or the Zone Rouge near Verdun, where vast quantities of First World War shells and chemical weapons lie hidden in the undergrowth, are probably not places we would choose to explore ourselves. There are, however, plenty of less hostile environments that testify to nature’s resilience.

The Avon Valley east of Bristol, for example, was once one of the most ravaged landscapes in Britain. To walk along it today is, however, despite the proximity of houses and light industry, to discover a green and much-loved natural corridor.

The despoliation of the river’s wooded banks began four miles upstream from Bristol at Conham, where by 1696 copper smelting was in full swing. Production soon spread to Crew’s Hole, a mile downstream, and by 1720 there was a total of 54 furnaces at the two sites. By the 1750s, however, most production had been centralised at Crew’s Hole, where there were now 49 furnaces, known as the Cupolas.

The rapid growth of the copper industry was driven by the slave trade, since goods made from copper or brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) were used extensively to barter for enslaved people on the coast of Africa. Brass was also smelted at Crew’s Hole, as well as lead, and it was lead that seems to have been the reason a tall chimney was built atop nearby Troopers Hill, so that the deadly fumes produced by smelting it could be piped up through a flue before being dispersed to the four winds.

There was also a hydraulic pumping engine at Crew’s Hole which piped water to Bristol. Downstream, however, there was little development until the Feeder Canal was built to supply water to the Floating Harbour in 1809.

The first industries along the Feeder – the Bristol Gaslight Company and Acraman’s Ironworks – were established soon afterwards. It was the construction of the Great Western Railway in the late 1830s, however, that spurred a rash of new development. In 1838, the Great Western Cotton Mill – the largest in southern England – opened on the north bank of the Feeder. A little further east, a chemical works was established at Netham, along with another lead works. Other factories followed – a tannery, a pottery, a galvanised ironworks. By all accounts, though, the most noxious was the Glue, Size & Hair Works, which you really wouldn’t have wanted to get downwind of when the vats were steaming. For a few years, there was even a coal mine – the Great Western Colliery –between the Feeder and the railway.

The railway also led to the establishment of a new industry at Crew’s Hole, where the Cupolas had ceased production after the abolition of the slave trade led to the collapse of the copper industry. In 1838, John Bethell, a Bristol inventor, developed a way of using coal tar as a wood preservative. Brunel was so impressed that he set up a Tar Works to extend the life of the wooden sleepers that were being laid by the million on his new lines. The spot he chose was Crew’s Hole, which was becoming something of an industrial hub. As well as two more chemical works, a colliery had been opened and Troopers Hill was being quarried for pennant limestone. After the colliery closed, the hill was mined for fireclay

which was processed at a nearby factory.

One of the chemical companies at Crew’s Hole vented some of their lethal fumes through the chimney on the hill, but most of the gases from the three factories were discharged through 20 or so chimneys down by the river. The airborne pollution was appalling. In 1895, a government inspector reported that, when ‘ammoniacal vapours’ from the Tar Works mingled with ‘muriatic acid gas’ from the chemical works, ‘a white cloud is at once created and on a wet day this is very visible’. Although he described this as ‘unfortunate’, no action was taken to stop it.

Things were even worse along the Feeder, where the chemical works at Netham now occupied a 50-acre site where around 500 workers produced compounds such as sulphuric acid, quicklime and caustic soda. In 1884, the Bristol Mercury described the area around the Feeder as ‘a gloomy vale enshrouded in almost perpetual smoke’ where ‘stench-laden folds of air envelop the visitor and make him involuntarily turn to the water side to try if he can breathe more freely’.

Deliverance did finally come, however. The Netham Chemical Works, after being taken over by ICI in 1927, closed in 1949. The 90-metre chimney that dominated the site was felled the following year, although the vast spoil heaps remained. The Tar Works at Crew’s Hole, which absorbed the two nearby chemical works in the early twentieth century, lasted much longer, being taken over by British Steel in 1970 before finally closing in 1981.

Today, evidence of the legacy of heavy industry is thin on the ground. The most notable survival is the chimney on Troopers Hill. Less well known is the engine-house chimney of the former colliery at Crew’s Hole.

Part of the Netham Chemical Works site is now an industrial estate, but most has been grassed over as a recreation ground. Evidence of its spoil heaps survives in the form of a steep bank rising from the north bank of the Feeder. It is difficult today, though, to imagine the toxic fumes that once lingered in the air, for the bank is clothed in a strip of gloriously untamed woodland, with rough tracks winding through the trees.

The site of the Tar Works at Crew’s Hole is now covered by housing, but Troopers Hill, quarried, scarred and undermined, survives as one of the most inspirational open spaces in the city. Not only has nature reclaimed the hill; astonishingly, all that despoliation has augmented its natural splendour. Apart from the iconic chimney on the summit, the plundering of stone from the flanks of the hill has created a dramatic landscape of sheer drops, outcrops, crags, and ravines. In 1995, Troopers Hill was declared a Local Nature Reserve in recognition of its importance as a unique habitat in the area due to the presence of acidic soils, and in 2010 it was designated a Regionally Important Geological and Geomorphological Site.

Conham, meanwhile, where it all started, has – after a spell as the site of Kingswood Sewage Works in the early 20th century – been restored to its pre-industrial, sylvan state as part of the Avon Valley Woodlands Nature Reserve, providing one of the most idyllic riverside walks in the area.

The Avon Valley east of Bristol was once a byword for smoke and pollution. Those who live along it today are well aware how nature has fought back to reclaim what was once so ravaged. Further afield, however, its charms are less well known, which seems a pity, not just because of the remarkable way in which abandonment has led to regeneration, but also because they include some of the most sublime and inspiring landscapes in the Bristol area. n • akemanpress.com

Image (top right): A map of 1769 showing the Cupolas, Lead Works and Engine House at Crew's Hole

FURTHER INFORMATION

Friends of Netham Park: facebook.com/nethamfriends Friends of Troopers Hill: troopers-hill.org.uk

Friends of Avon Valley Woodlands Nature Reserve:

hanhamabbots-pc.gov.uk/friends-of-avon-valley-woodlands

Woodland on the site of Netham Chemical Works

A tall chimney was built atop nearby Troopers Hill so that the deadly fumes produced by smelting could be piped up and dispersed