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From Pit To Port


From Pit To Port
Photo Information
Copyright: Chris Ryder (biblio) Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 523 W: 6 N: 225] (2498)
Genre: Places
Medium: Color
Date Taken: 2006-06-13
Categories: Artwork
Photo Version: Original Version, Workshop
Date Submitted: 2006-06-20 7:34
Viewed: 597
Points: 6
[Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note
In 1862, 2,000,000 tonnes of coal were exported from Cardiff Docks; by 1913, this had risen to 10,700,000 tonnes. It was the heyday before the depression of the 1930s.Cardiff was the boom town of late Victorian Britain. For a few brief years just prior to the First World War, the tonnage of cargo handled at the port outstripped that of either London or Liverpool.
The growth of the iron industry along the Heads of the South Wales Valleys gave the initial impetus for the development of Cardiff as a port. In 1794, the Glamorganshire Canal was completed, linking Cardiff with Merthyr, and in 1798 a basin was built, connecting the canal to the sea. Increasing agitation for proper dock facilities led Cardiff's foremost landowner, the 2nd Marquess of Bute, to promote the construction of the West Bute Dock, opened in October 1839. Just two years later, the Taff Vale Railway was opened.
From the 1850s onwards, coal began to supplant iron as the industrial foundation of south Wales, as the deep seams of the Cynon and Rhondda valleys were exploited. South Wales steam coal was soon to be to world energy supplies what oil is today, and annual exports reached 2 million tonnes as early as 1862. A further dock, the East Bute, had been opened in 1859, but the death of the 2nd Marquess in 1848 had left the Bute Estate trustees over-cautious and reluctant to invest in new dock facilities.
This statue "From Pit to Port" was initiated as a tribute to the South Wales Coal;fields it is by John Clinch Arca from Tregaron, in the background you can see the modernising of the old industrial docklands with the building of high rise apartments.
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Critiques [Translate]

  • Great 
  • ma-at Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 242 W: 3 N: 187] (1372)
  • [2006-06-20 11:59]

Pity about the messy background - perhaps a close crop might have helped...love the subject matter and the note.

Nice pic, did a dit croping

  • Great 
  • Quark Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor [C: 1339 W: 10 N: 29] (66)
  • [2006-07-02 4:51]

However you could look for a "better" background, this IS a picture of a statue, nice one too !

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