From Gunpowder to Greggy the Scrap

This project has many tributaries and keeping up with the flow on an even basis is proving to be a difficult one.  Over the last 3 /4 weeks I seem to have been following threads through research, snippets of information, contacts and interviews with people. The amount of information available and its relevance has to be assessed, do I only collect information useful and interesting to me or what might be potentially interesting to others and what is that........??
Reflecting at this point, my starting point was Somervell's book 'Water powered mills of South Westmorland' and therefore I am making an assessment of 'then and now,' what most interests me is what is to be found on the ground - out in the landscape, as it is now, looking for clues and alongside that the information I continue to learn about what a rural but industrial landscape it was compared with the tidied attractive presentation that now prevails for it has become a part of the tourist industry. Through half closed eyes I see what is hear now and also what was formally there during that period of local production from the 18th to early 20th century and at its height Victorian values, philanthropy, Quaker businessmen and Wars for which food, gunpowder and clothing were all produced locally by water powered engineering. Traces on the ground are supported by the research and conversation with those who have a great deal more knowledge than I.

Mill buildings that still exist as working buildings - the changes within those buildings and what they produce now, in some cases it bears no connection and in others it has evolved for instance the Bela Mills still produce combs but instead of horn they are plastic now, and yet at Abbey Horn Works in Holme Mills, they relocated there some years ago from Kendal, and are still working horn in  traditional ways- I will film there in the New Year.

Stuart and I visited Greggy's this last Wednesday, formally Gatebeck Gunpowder works. Brian Gregg the quietly spoken owner gave us his time and enjoyed the reminiscence of his Grandfathers days at the Gunpowder works-tales of accidents and the vastness of the complex works. His office was also the office of the Gunpowder works and much of the yard was given over to the cooperage -wooden barrels in which the gunpowder was transported and the tramway - horsedrawn carts running on metal rails from Gatebeck to Milnthorpe Station. 

The tramway from Gatebeck to Milnthorpe Station

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Man in the Moon -gunpowder wrapper

Greggy had some photos and on Friday I gleaned more information of labels and wrappers for cakes of gunpowder when I visited Norri to view some of Mike Davies Shiel's archive. Ian Tyler's talk  at HCM yesterday and the discovery that he had written an extensively researched and illustrated book on the gunpowder mills supplies valuable information for which I have not got the time and as Grayson Perry commented on his exhibition after a 2 year residency at the British Museum -'don't look to deep I am an artist not a historian'.
My plan is to visit every site that Somervell named and photograph what is there now and as such I am  about half way through this task.
What struck me about about Greggy's was the order and organisation of the scrap,  alongside Peasey Beck cars in the process of being disemboweled, regimented and silent as they rest on bald rubber towers, autumn leaves falling about and hens scratting here and there. Inside what was part of the cooperage works his living archive of radiators, headlamps, batteries etc etc wait on ordered shelves for the next phase of their useful life.
Gunpowder was used for fog lamps on the railway and supplied Standard fireworks now from this same site engines and parts for European cars are exported to Poland and Hungary on a regular basis.