Wednesday 23 January 2013

At the back of the New City

The New City Takeaway, Shireland Road, Smethwick, January 2013



Disused Shop, Shireland Road, Smethwick, January 2013

3 comments:

  1. The New City is a Chinese takeaway a few streets from us on the Shireland Road.

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  2. Beautifully evocative historical geometries. Behind and out back of the New City there always lurks the Old.

    The whispers we hear on the wind are perhaps the rumours of its return.

    In fact, here it is again right now, in that old chimney at New City. It would have looked perfectly in place where all these businesses began, c. two centuries ago. And of course the brickwork likewise. Mutatis mutandis.

    "Disused" -- the word itself harking back to that time when "use" might actually have been something useful.

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  3. Thank you, TC.

    There are the traces of the older industries everywhere in the Black Country. No doubt in part because this is a place passed over.

    For all the dreadful working conditions at that time, people nevertheless had a sense of their social and economic value; there could be no trade union movement worth talking of if the workers didn't believe they were useful for something.

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