16 C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 Neil Marshall Britain’s transport heritage The Transport Trust, promoting the preservation and restoration of Britain’s transport heritage in all its forms, grew from the destruction of transport heritage in the 1950s and 60s. By any measure, Britain’s record in the history and development of transport is second to none. As a small island nation, whose historic wealth has been derived from manufacture and international trade, our growth and prosperity have been inextricably linked with the movement of people and cargo. We find transport artefacts in most environments: roads and waterways navigated and constructed by the Romans; infrastructure from the world’s oldest railway networks; passenger aircraft whose antecedents can be traced to de Havilland at Hatfield and Rolls Royce in Derby;modest car factories that emerged as a leap of faith from traditional smithies; and lighthouses built in almost impossible circumstances by the Stephenson family. Indeed, Britain’s treasures are so commonplace that there is a tendency to lose sight of their value. Just one small area in England’s south east, the Lea Valley, was home to aerospace giants AVRO and de Havilland. It was here that we saw the first flight of a British-built plane. It was here that Bremer constructed the first British car and Prestwich’s JAP engine formed the basis of the British motorcycle industry;whereWalter Hancock produced London’s steam buses and Colin Chapman led the world of motor racing with his Lotus cars; where theThames Ironworks and Shipping Company built the world’s largest warship, the world’s first sea-going ironclad (HMS Warrior); and where petrol was invented. The LeaValley was also home to one of Britain’s most secret places, one which secured for Britain its expanding colonies and wealth. The Royal Gunpowder Mills at WalthamAbbey used the world’s most intensive network of navigations and railways to produce gunpowder, nitro-glycerine and missiles for over 300 years. It was not only Britain’s biggest factory, but almost certainly the world’s first integrated production centre. In its 175 acres of well-manicured parkland stand 21 buildings designated to be of major historical importance. Yet elsewhere in the LeaValley there is little evidence of any coordinated strategy to mark the significance of the area’s profound transport legacy. One reason might be the historical reluctance to consider transport to be part of the built heritage.Another is the increasing tendency of development authorities to see our manufacturing past as evidence of economic failure, something to be bulldozed away to emphasise the credentials of renewal and dynamic growth opportunities. Unfortunately, rather like the siren call of the supermarkets – ‘once they’ve gone, they’ve gone’ – we can not recreate heritage. Saving heritage was the reason the Transport Trust emerged in the testing days of the 1960s. Britain was finally waking up to the wholesale destruction of transport heritage in the 1950s and 60s, culminating in the lamentable degradation of the nation’s waterways and the sentencing of thousands of steam locomotives to the dismantler’s torch.The last straw was the demolition of the Euston Arch in 1961. Built in 1837 as the entrance to Euston Station, the elegant 21-metre-high Doric columns were based on the finest Italian architecture. The structure mirrored the elegant BirminghamCurzon Street station building at the other end of the London and Birmingham Railway. The outcry over the proposed demolition set off a chain The Brighton Belle being officially named by the Mayor of Brighton in 1934
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