What was it like in the FOD? (General)

by Roger Griffiths , Thursday, March 05, 2009, 00:27 (5815 days ago) @ sylviamorgan

Hello Sylvia,

I'm not an expert and what I write may get shot down in short order. I think pollution was caused by the burning of coal, industrial and domestic, not the mining thereof. Obviously, slag heaps were pollution, but did'nt blacken buildings.

The Forest villages and Cinderford look pretty clean to me, despite being there because of coal and iron (and stone quarrying) . Gwent/Monmouthshire had both and I remember the Newport area in the 1950's when I was a child. There was some blackening of the red brick houses, but not excessive and nothing like London. I remember London in the early 60's and it was black from the domestic and hundreds/thousands of small industrial enterprises burning coal for a couple of centuries. I remember the clean up process starting about 1963 when buildings were cleaned by sand blasting or high pressure water hoses.

My family was in Soudley in the 19th Century and the Soudley Valley contained both coal and iron mines. Just below Soudley was an iron works with tall chimneys. Built about 1830 and demolished about 1890 (It never earnt much of a profit), most impressive looking place (Krupp of Essen would have been proud to own it)(there's a pic. of it in The Industrial History of Dean by Cyril Hart) Pic. about 1880 despite the caption giving the impression of 1830. The Soudley Valley houses all look clean.

Roger