Vic Hallam
Teoksen Silent Valley tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Tekijän teokset
towers of Strength 1 kappale
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Sukupuoli
- male
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Tilastot
- Teokset
- 4
- Jäseniä
- 16
- Suosituimmuussija
- #679,947
- Arvio (tähdet)
- 4.0
- Kirja-arvosteluja
- 1
- ISBN:t
- 3
The problem with supplying water for major cities is that the reservoirs required to collect the water required are best built in upland areas of great natural beauty, and often occupied by people with little political influence - and therefore little say in what happens to them. Thus it was with the villagers of two settlements in North Derbyshire - Ashopton and Derwent. From 1920, when the enabling legislation was first passed, these villages were under delayed sentence of death as the powers that be had earmarked their valleys for flooding.
After much national opposition, work started on the Ladybower Reservoir in 1935.The coming of the Second World War made these reservoirs even more urgent, as industry - especially in Sheffield, with its strategic steel industries - needed greater amounts of water than ever before, and the work was accelerated. By 1941 impounding had started and the villages started to be demolished around 1943. This book chronicles the villages as they were, and their transition from viable, living communities to underwater ghosts. The pictures of the now-vanished buildings and people have an eerie sense about them, because these places are not just demolished; they are submerged, and forever inaccessible.
In one picture, the uncompleted viaduct for the diverted main road towers over the village whilst the local carrier goes about his business, delivering goods to the few villagers left. Meanwhile, children have come out to look at the carrier's lorry, oblivious to the change that will soon come upon them. The alien presence of the new looms over the old, and must be a topic of conversation between the adults in the picture. It is perhaps the most poignant picture in the book, with a dreadful sense of oncoming disruption and exile. A slim volume that speaks more words than it contains on its pages.… (lisätietoja)