Spirit of the North Gallery

Barrow-in-Furness shipyard 1920 EPW004064

BARROW-IN-FURNESS, Cumbria. Aerial view of the shipyard in July 1920 with four ships in various stages of completion. The shipyard was first established in 1852; by 1920 it was operated by Vickers Ltd as the Naval Construction Yard. At around this time it was building merchant vessels and liners for companies like Cunard. Aerofilms Collection (see Links)

© Historic England

Consett Steel Works FF98_00247

Consett Steel Works, County Durham, 1945-80. Eric de Mare (1910-2002) cellulose acetate negative. Steel-making dominated Consett for 140 years from 1840, and the steelworks, employing 6, 000 workers in the 1960s, loomed over rows of terraced houses. Eric de Mare's elevated view of Consett Steel Works captures their gargantuan scale, echoing the work of pre-war photographers such as Albert Renger-Patzsch in Germany and Charles Sheeler in the United States who emphasised the strong forms of industrial structures. De Mare used colour photography here, recognising that this required a ?'different vision' from black-and-white film. The massive tube in the foreground reflects his view that a close shot filling or almost filling? the frame 'will usually be more effective and more interesting'

© Historic England

St George's Hall OP02751

St George's Hall, St George's Plateau, Liverpool, 1854-?55. Attributed to Thomas Sutton (1819-75), salted paper print. Cabs stand outside the newly built neoclassical St George's Hall, designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes and completed by Charles Robert Cockerell. The building, combining a public hall and law courts, was erected between 1841 and 1856. The photograph is attributed to Thomas Sutton because the original mount bears the name of the Frenchman Louis-Desire Blanquart-Evrard, who published some of Sutton's negatives in 1854. Sutton and Blanquart-Evrard opened a printing establishment on Jersey in 1855, and launched the journal Photographic Notes the following year. Sutton was a prolific writer on photography, and published A Dictionary of Photography in 1858

© Historic England