Dürkopp Diana

In 1860 Nicholas Dürkopp, with Carl Schmidt, started a factory for the production of sewing machines.  In 1876, Carl Schmidt was handsomely recompensed and "allowed leave".  After that time, the factory started to produce bicycles and became very successful. Cycles under the Dürkopp name continued to be sold until 2006 though manufactured by Biria AG.

Nowadays, Dürkopp Adler AG, manufactures industrial sewing machines, so in a way you could say the company has come full circle.  It is still in Bielefeld, Germany.

This card is a reproduction of advertising published between 1900 and 1914 and was sent to me from Germany.

C is for Czech Republic

From one extreme showing a beautiful medieval (yes, again) castle in the Czech Republic...

The back of the card says the following which I have tried to translate using the Google translator:

The former guardian of the western borders of the kingdom, the powerful and ancient castle Loket has opened its doors to visitors during the winter. In addition, snow can conjure up a becoming hat, along with the charming town beneath the castle.

..to the other of an industrial complex

From the back of the card:

The old steel works. The idea of establishing an ironworks using untapped black coal deposits dates back to 1767. The works originally had been intended as mere departments of the Frýdlant foundry, but before starting construction in 1829 this plan was abandoned and Vitkovice emerged as an independent enterprise

The town of Ostava is the most industrialised of the Czech Republic although it was originally an agricultural village.  Mining stopped in 1994 and part of the ironworks closed in 1998.  There is now a Mining Museum there, the largest of its kind in the world.  The old steel mill is part of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

It may seem odd to you, it seems odd to me too, that I collect postcards showing beautiful medieval buildings as well as industrial heritage.  I'm not at all sure why I find it so fascinating but maybe Mrs. Brown, my history teacher, drummed the details of the Industrial Revolution into me better than I realised at the time.

Pas de Calais

See my post Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin for a map of this area in the north of France.  This card gives some idea of the landscape.  The slag heaps in particular are noticeable from a distance.  The industrial heritage is being preserved and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin map for Monday

Le bassin minier du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais is one of the more recent (2012) inscriptions on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  I bought the card myself when passing through the area, not long before it was accepted onto the list.

When driving through Nord-Pas de Calais along the motorway, it seems a flat and featureless place with the exception of the slag heaps here and there.  Some appear to have been converted into artificial ski slopes. The slag heaps are all that remain of the coal mining industry which continued from the 18th to the 20th century.  It ended when the last mine closed during the 1990s.

The pictures around the map show "scenes" from the mining museum at Lewarde.  The conditions for workers were often harsh, as described in "Germinal" by Emile Zola though employers did provide community buildings and "model" villages.

It isn't the most fascinating area visually, but an interesting part of industrial heritage.

Speicherstadt

Speicherstadt  means the warehouse district of Hamburg in northern Germany.  It was built towards the end of the 19th century and since 1991 has been a protected area.  It is the largest area in the world built on timber-pile foundations.

Each warehouse has a canal on one side and a road on the other.  Some of the buildings are still used as warehouses and others have been converted into museums and tourist attractions.

This postcard shows the view from the Poggenmühlenbrücke (bridge) to the confluence of two canals, Hollandfleet on the left with Wandrahmsfleet on the right.

Ferrymead Park

The name Ferrymead immediately made me think of Ireland but the card came from New Zealand.  The information on the back explains all:

Curragh Cottage was built around 1865 and moved to Ferrymead in 1972.  Named after the birthplace in Ireland of its first owners the Gordon family, it now portrays a middle class Edwardian family home between 1910 and 1916.  Friends of Ferrymead dress in costume and occupy the cottage on weekends and event days along with Ferrymead's Heritage Youth pictured here boarding a Ferrymead tram.

According to the person who sent it, the restored steam trains and trams are used to ferry people around the park.

I see that one of the member societies is the Ferrymead Clydesdales Society, so presumably there is horse drawn transport as well as trains and trams.  Apparently the park was once called the Museum of Science and Industry.  I think they've probably chosen a better name to appeal to more people, but it does incorporate a fair amount of industrial history. 

The Island, Antwerp

Het Eilandje twijfelt tusses land en water - Rijnkaai
The Island suspended between land and water - Rijnkaai

The old cranes in the former port of Antwerp on the river Schelde.  Now there's a huge container port further downstream, leaving behind these cranes, looking remarkably like metallic giraffes.

Machines in Calderdale

The Calderdale Industrial Museum found a home for Enid, a horizontal Corliss steam engine.  I could copy out what Wikipedia has to say on the subject and pretend I know what I'm talking about, but instead I'll leave you the link and let those who want to, read all about it.

But there's more to the story because the Calderdale Industrial Museum is closed.  I can't seem to find out why or whether it's only temporary, but I suspect not.  It looks as though Enid will live on only in this card and an identical picture on a site called "From Weaver to Web: an online visual archive of Calderdale history". 

Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, was they say the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.  You must look after your industrial heritage, in that case Calderdale.

All grist to the mill

Keremeos Grist Mill is in the town of Keremeos, towards the west coast of Canada.  Happily for the residents of the town, it was built in 1877 by a man called Barrington Price, meaning  that they no longer had to travel over 150 miles to get flour.

It didn't last very long, by the end of the century it had closed because it was no longer making a profit.  However it has been restored and is the only working mill in British Columbia.

Dortmund coking plant

Dortmund is part of the European Industrial Heritage Route because of the Zollern colliery there, opened in 1898 as a model colliery.  An earlier mine, the Hansa Colliery, supplied the coal for the Hansa coking plant built in 1927.  It was finally closed only in the 199os but has been included on the Industrial Heritage Route as shown on the card.  It can be visited on guided tours conducted by former employees.

Spiral stairs

Outside staircases at Kehrwiederfleet.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair - Francis Bacon, Essays or Counsels XI.

This card shows the old warehouses in the harbour quarter of Hamburg, the Speicherstadt,  which was built between 1883 and 1928.  The warehouses, 17 of them all seven or eight storeys high, make up the largest warehouse complex of that time in the world.  They are on the tentative list to be considered for inclusion as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

Zaanse Schans

This card shows the interior of the Costume Museum in Zaanse Schans, near Amsterdam in the Netherlands.  It was once a merchant's house built in 1670, opened as a museum in 1972 as part of the Zaanse Schans village on the banks of the river Zaan.  The area is laid out as a typical village of the 19th century.  Apart from the historic houses, it has six large industrial windmills and two smaller ones.  It is part of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

Steyr

As a young teenager, I spent a month in Austria on an exchange organised by my German teacher through the Anglo Austrian Society.  Really, I didn't know enough German to be able to make the most of the experience but later I realised I had absorbed more than I'd been aware.  I ended up being far more comfortable speaking German than French though I'd been learning French far longer.

Because of having spent some time there, I'm always delighted  when a card arrives from anywhere in Austria.  That's happened only three times, and all three times were this month.  I don't know what's happened - a sudden spurt in Postcrossing membership in Austria?

Steyr wasn't one of the places I visited but I wish I had.  It is an ancient city situated on two rivers which meet at the centre of the city.  There is also a canal, the Wehrgraben shown on the card, which was built to power many different mills and did so for hundreds of years.  It is an area rich in industrial history.

The Silk Mill, Derby

Lombe's Silk Mill, when it opened in 1721, brought to England technology developed in Italy which enabled silk to be thrown on machines driven by water power.  Extensively rebuilt in 1910 after a fire, the Silk Mill now houses Derby's Museum of Industry and History.

The Derwent Valley Mills World heritage Site was inscribed by UNESCO in 2001.  It was the birthplace of the factory system - where water power was first successfully harnessed for textile production.