Found this photo online today.
What a cool thing - never knew about them before, and I spent a good part of my childhood not far away
(And No it is NOT New Zealand today - here it is blazing hot and I've just come in from the pool)
I am awed by people with that kind of talent and the ability to make it happen. Brilliant works of art.
ps Notice the feet?
?ÿ
It might be hot in New Zealand, but Consett this morning looks much like that. Snow starting to melt and run off the hills, so the road by my office is a foot deep in water.
Must. Have. BeerLegger. There.
https://www.thisisdurham.com/things-to-do/terris-novalis-sculpture-p1061671
That does not sound like any idea of fun.
Where are you based? Have you been and touched these puppies?
www.atlasobscura.com/places/terris-novalis
Built on the site of the oldest commercial railway line in Britain??the Stanhope and Tyne Railway Line??this sculpture marks the location of what was once Europe??s largest steelworks.
The sculptures are 20 times the size of the tools they represent. The stainless steel theodolite and engineer??s level stand on the top of a small hill and are visible for miles around. The sculptures of these 19th-century instruments are a monument to the history and industry of the local area.
The enormous sculptures were created by Tony Cragg. Take a good look at the bottom of the instruments, and you??ll notice they??re held up by a peculiar set of ??feet???a human hand, a horse hoof, a bird foot, and a reptilian foot. It??s said these feet were inspired by the symbolic heraldry of shields and coats of arms associated with the local land and its ownership.
Edit: We didn't need another picture, so I tried killing the link. How do you put a link in a post without pulling in the stuff at that link??ÿ It used to be possible.
I'm based near Rowlands Gill, about 6 miles down the Derwent Valley from Consett. Consett normally gets quite solid snow but this year it had an early dump and then a week of rain which has left everywhere saturated.
What with that and COVID (yes, it does exist - it isn't a myth) and BREXIT, we are spending rather too much time looking out the window waiting for jobs to start up again. At least it gives time to post on SurveyorConnect!
Yes, Consett was a strange place to find a steelworks. It started off as a small works using local iron ore, limestone and coal - 1000ft. up in the Durham Hills. The Stanhope and Tyne Railway linked the quarries, the works and took finished product down to the coast on the River Tyne.
Local iron ore soon ran out but by then the works had grown and ore started to be imported. Twenty mile from Tyne Dock to Consett, climbing up 900 ft. over the last 10 miles. When I first moved up to this area the steelworks was still going strong and the sight of 800 tons of train being hauled up gradients of steeper than 1 in 50 was amazing - two towering columns of smoke and a sound that could be heard for many miles. When an ore ship was in there were trains every two hours day and night until it had been unloaded.
The steelworks closed in 1980; much of the old trackbed is now a footpath and littered with iron-ore pellets which had fallen off the railway wagons over the years.