April 2017
haematite, n.
by BRIAN WHALLEY
Brian Whalley is Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. He spent most of his career as Professor of Geomorphology at Queen’s University of Belfast, with visiting positions at the University of Iceland and Arizona State University. He continues to research in glacial systems, mountain geomorphology and in the educational uses of technology. An enthusiastic member of the Norman Nicholson Society, Brian gave a talk on Nicholson and Geology at an event organised by the Royal Geographical Society at Brantwood, John Ruskin's former home near Coniston, in September 2016.
Millom and Ironworking
Those reading Nicholson's poems with perhaps little knowledge of Cumbria may need help in explaining why 'haematite' and 'ore' are found in his poems and, perhaps not surprisingly, in very few other poets. The small Cumbrian town of Millom, grew up, separate from the original village of Holborn Hill, as a consequence of the haematite extraction at Hodbarrow. Millom railway station was originally known as Holborn Hill Halt before the new town of Millom was built from the mid 1860s. The first shafts to the haematite deposit were dug from 1855, although several adits through the limestone were also able to penetrate the seams of rich haematite. The ore was smelted at Millom until the mines and ironworks were closed in 1968. Nicholson mentioned the incomer miners to Askam (and by implication Millom) in his poem ‘Askam Visited’. His autobiography, Wednesday Early Closing, gives specific details about the growth of Millom.
Haematite and associated words in Norman Nicholson's Poetry
Haematite is a word that occurs in eight of Nicholson's poems (see list below). It is often spelled 'hematite' in geology texts nowadays but the original form contains the 'a' after the original Greek word for blood, αίμα [haima], because of its blood red colour, as in the pigment rouge. And of course blood is given its red colour by way of the blood protein haemoglobin. (More on this is given below where I explore a little of the chemistry and geology involved around haematite and iron).
Those reading Nicholson's poems with perhaps little knowledge of Cumbria may need help in explaining why 'haematite' and 'ore' are found in his poems and, perhaps not surprisingly, in very few other poets. The small Cumbrian town of Millom, grew up, separate from the original village of Holborn Hill, as a consequence of the haematite extraction at Hodbarrow. Millom railway station was originally known as Holborn Hill Halt before the new town of Millom was built from the mid 1860s. The first shafts to the haematite deposit were dug from 1855, although several adits through the limestone were also able to penetrate the seams of rich haematite. The ore was smelted at Millom until the mines and ironworks were closed in 1968. Nicholson mentioned the incomer miners to Askam (and by implication Millom) in his poem ‘Askam Visited’. His autobiography, Wednesday Early Closing, gives specific details about the growth of Millom.
Haematite and associated words in Norman Nicholson's Poetry
Haematite is a word that occurs in eight of Nicholson's poems (see list below). It is often spelled 'hematite' in geology texts nowadays but the original form contains the 'a' after the original Greek word for blood, αίμα [haima], because of its blood red colour, as in the pigment rouge. And of course blood is given its red colour by way of the blood protein haemoglobin. (More on this is given below where I explore a little of the chemistry and geology involved around haematite and iron).
There are eight poems that specifically refer to haematite: ‘A Street in Cumberland’, ‘Askam Visited’, ‘Bond Street’, ‘The Bloody Cranesbill’, ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’, ‘Hodbarrow Flooded’, ‘The Seven Rocks: Mountain Limestone’ and ‘Fossils’. Additionally, there is a reference to another form of haematite. In ‘The Seven Rocks: Eskdale Granite’: 'The warts of stone glow red as pencil ore/Polished to a jewel'. The pinkish rock of the Eskdale granite is mainly from pink feldspar grains but in some cases, especially near Boot, the rock is stained with haematite, which also occurs in veins. Haematite, and pencil ore have also been polished to make jewellery. 'Pencil ore' is not related to the production of pencils, specifically associated with graphite (wad) deposits in Borrowdale.
‘Bond Street’:
Jaunted at then ungathered orchards of ore,
Damsons of haematite…
In ‘A Street in Cumberland’ (Collected Poems, p. 122) the final four lines are:
.... When the slag
Is puddled across the clouds, and curlews fly
Above the chimneys, the walls thrust like a crag
Through the dark tide of haematite in the night sky.
This poem, from the collection Rock Face of 1948, is when the blast furnaces at Millom would be in operation and the inevitable dust would come from crushed haematite. We shall see this image again later. (‘Puddling’ incidentally, is an iron-working process designed to remove slag from melted pig iron and produce wrought iron. As far as I know it was never done at Millom. Much more information in Wikipedia if you need it! The puddled iron was collected into 'blooms', a word also associated with the primitive smelting process in bloomeries. For more iron production, see Marshall and Davies-Shiel (1977) Industrial Archaeology of the Lake Counties, Whitehaven: Michael Moon.
Another cross-reference, with 'flux', occurs in ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’:
The river seeped from the marshes
In a flux of haematite.
Indeed, in some of the pools you can still see this staining; a link between the present day and the high temperatures of the iron-making past. Limestone is added to iron ore in a furnace to help it melt, i.e. a flux, and absorb the impurities to form slag.
In ‘Askam Visited’ (CP pp. 39-40);
In the time when slag is only a memorial
Of a haematite dream, and the sky is bright and clear,
The sea and the hope and the children will be new with the light and the year.
In this early poem (Five Rivers 1944), the slag is the remnant of iron production. But does Nicholson already perceive the end of iron production in Cumbria?
‘The Bloody Cranesbill’ (CP p. 361) is a much later poem (Sea to the West 1981) when iron production had stopped and the air would be clear. It explores the topography of the limestone area at 'Cumberland's southernmost point, a headland, half-blasted away,' i.e. Hodbarrow Point where you can see the Bloody Cranesbill itself, 'pencilled with metal-thread/Haematite-purple veins'. The imagery of this is obvious and has been explored further in Word of the Month, 'Skerry' (July 2016).
In ‘Hodbarrow Flooded’ (CP p. 279) there is a direct link between the mining and the haematite itself, 'My Uncle Jack was killed/With half a ton of haematite on his back'. ‘Fossils’ (CP p.216-7) is one of Nicholson's humankind-geology poems. The note,
In the red of the rock
(Sandstone and haematite)
The fossils are moving.'
refers to the red in the rocks of the area. The red sandstone of St Bees (c.f. ‘The Seven Rocks’, CP p. 250), 'across a slab of red rock' has iron (haematite) in a very thin crusts that formed around the grains before deposition in the sediments. The grains in the St Bees sandstone are derived from ancient rivers and alluvial plains whereas the darker red grain coatings in the cross-bedded Eden Valley sandstones are from aeolian deposits. In each of these cases there is a good reason to use 'haematite' in its mineral context.
We now turn to 'blood' in Nicholson's poetry. It might be expected that this word is common in poetry in English. Don Paterson has nine references and John Dryden 64. It is also not unexpected that Ted Hughes has some 476! Nicholson has 'only' 39.
In ‘The Blackberry’ (CP p. 48), the phrase 'In gelatine of Jesus' blood' is a religious image in an early poem of the religious Nicholson (although the use of the 'n word' in the poem might be discussed). But the poem is, in fact, more about the area, 'between the railway and the mine' as 'waggons of ore are shunted past' that 'spray the berries with red dust'. There was no getting away from the red haematite dust in those days.
Perhaps surprisingly, there is no direct mention of life-blood draining away from Millom as the ironworks were closed down and dismantled (in several poems in A Local Habitation and Sea to the West). But Nicholson doesn't really need to make such an obvious link. In ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’ (CP p. 359) we have a vivid description of geology, iron working and local employment. This is continued in the next poem (‘The Bloody Cranesbill’) where we see the plants, the memories of the skyline ('Number Ten', the pithead) that we have come to view with Nicholson as part of the changing economics of haematite ore. So the death is portrayed not so much as blood being lost (although c.f. 'bled white of every stain of ore') as lungs collapsing; '– mines/Drowned under stagnant waters, and, 'A town's/purpose subsides with the mine' (‘The Bloody Cranesbill’).
Having looked at a few of the implications of 'blood', 'haematite' and 'ore' I have listed the poems under these headings for the reader's perusal and study. I have also included lists of some of the poems involving the colour 'red' referring directly or indirectly to haematite as well as 'brown'. The reference in ‘The Blackberry’ has already been noted. Haematite can be a dark brown-red colour. As well as the image in this poem of ‘the berries’ being sprayed ‘with red dust’ in ‘Sea to the West’ (CP p. 338) the fifteen year old boy turns home from a sunset through a 'brown drizzle'. The drizzle may not be of wet rain but of brown-stained dust and grit from the furnaces.
There are four lists below with poem titles (and page numbers in the Collected Poems) for each of my search areas.
Containing 'haematite'
Askam Visited (39)
A Street in Cumberland (122)
Fossils (216)
Mountain Limestone, The Seven Rocks (247)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
Bond Street (304)
On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks (359)
The Bloody Cranesbill (361)
Containing 'ore'
Five Rivers (11)
Egremont (14)
Cleator Moor (16)
To the River Duddon (24)
Askam Visited (39)
The Blackberry (48)
Stalingrad, 1942 (52)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
The Council of the Seven Deadly Sins (79)
The Bow in the Cloud (103)
The Orphan (218)
The Seven Rocks (242)
The Borehole (266)
The Elvers (275)
Bee Orchid at Hodbarrow (276)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
The Riddle (280)
Bond Street (304)
The Bloody Cranesbill (361)
On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks (359)
Of This Parish (416)
Old Railway Sidings Millom (427)
Brown: of the 48 poems containing this word the following might contain a link to haematite; what do you think?
For St. James 1943 (55)
The Holy Mountain (92)
Songs Unheard (152)
Pendulum Poem (154)
The Riddle (280)
Bond Street (304)
Sea to the West (338)
and for Red:
Egremont (14)
Askam Visited (39)
The Blackberry (48)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
Containing 'blood'
Five Rivers (11)
Egremont (14)
Whitehaven (18)
South Cumberland, 10 May 1943 (29)
Songs of the Islands (33)
Maiden's Song (35)
Shrewsbury (42)
September in Shropshire (43)
The Blackberry (48)
Waiting for spring 1943 (50)
Stalingrad 1942 (52)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
Michaelmas (64)
Now in the Time of this Mortal Life (66)
Poem for Epiphany (72)
The Council of the Seven Deadly Sins (79)
The Garden of the Innocent (84)
The Holy Mountain (92)
The Land Under the Ice (116)
Winter Song (124)
Caedmon (137)
The Tame Hare (140)
For Emily Brontë (142)
New Year's Eve (144)
To a Child Before Birth (146)
Songs Unheard (152)
The River of Flesh (158)
The Anatomy of Desire (159)
Song from the Songless (165)
Silecroft Shore (170)
Millom Old Quarry (181)
Fossils (216)
The Seven Rocks (242)
Have You Been to London? (295)
Toadstools (342)
Nobbut God (345)
Now that I have Made My Decision (406)
Sonnet for Good Friday (407)
On Suspected Dry Rot in the Roof of a Parish Church (409)
‘Bond Street’:
Jaunted at then ungathered orchards of ore,
Damsons of haematite…
In ‘A Street in Cumberland’ (Collected Poems, p. 122) the final four lines are:
.... When the slag
Is puddled across the clouds, and curlews fly
Above the chimneys, the walls thrust like a crag
Through the dark tide of haematite in the night sky.
This poem, from the collection Rock Face of 1948, is when the blast furnaces at Millom would be in operation and the inevitable dust would come from crushed haematite. We shall see this image again later. (‘Puddling’ incidentally, is an iron-working process designed to remove slag from melted pig iron and produce wrought iron. As far as I know it was never done at Millom. Much more information in Wikipedia if you need it! The puddled iron was collected into 'blooms', a word also associated with the primitive smelting process in bloomeries. For more iron production, see Marshall and Davies-Shiel (1977) Industrial Archaeology of the Lake Counties, Whitehaven: Michael Moon.
Another cross-reference, with 'flux', occurs in ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’:
The river seeped from the marshes
In a flux of haematite.
Indeed, in some of the pools you can still see this staining; a link between the present day and the high temperatures of the iron-making past. Limestone is added to iron ore in a furnace to help it melt, i.e. a flux, and absorb the impurities to form slag.
In ‘Askam Visited’ (CP pp. 39-40);
In the time when slag is only a memorial
Of a haematite dream, and the sky is bright and clear,
The sea and the hope and the children will be new with the light and the year.
In this early poem (Five Rivers 1944), the slag is the remnant of iron production. But does Nicholson already perceive the end of iron production in Cumbria?
‘The Bloody Cranesbill’ (CP p. 361) is a much later poem (Sea to the West 1981) when iron production had stopped and the air would be clear. It explores the topography of the limestone area at 'Cumberland's southernmost point, a headland, half-blasted away,' i.e. Hodbarrow Point where you can see the Bloody Cranesbill itself, 'pencilled with metal-thread/Haematite-purple veins'. The imagery of this is obvious and has been explored further in Word of the Month, 'Skerry' (July 2016).
In ‘Hodbarrow Flooded’ (CP p. 279) there is a direct link between the mining and the haematite itself, 'My Uncle Jack was killed/With half a ton of haematite on his back'. ‘Fossils’ (CP p.216-7) is one of Nicholson's humankind-geology poems. The note,
In the red of the rock
(Sandstone and haematite)
The fossils are moving.'
refers to the red in the rocks of the area. The red sandstone of St Bees (c.f. ‘The Seven Rocks’, CP p. 250), 'across a slab of red rock' has iron (haematite) in a very thin crusts that formed around the grains before deposition in the sediments. The grains in the St Bees sandstone are derived from ancient rivers and alluvial plains whereas the darker red grain coatings in the cross-bedded Eden Valley sandstones are from aeolian deposits. In each of these cases there is a good reason to use 'haematite' in its mineral context.
We now turn to 'blood' in Nicholson's poetry. It might be expected that this word is common in poetry in English. Don Paterson has nine references and John Dryden 64. It is also not unexpected that Ted Hughes has some 476! Nicholson has 'only' 39.
In ‘The Blackberry’ (CP p. 48), the phrase 'In gelatine of Jesus' blood' is a religious image in an early poem of the religious Nicholson (although the use of the 'n word' in the poem might be discussed). But the poem is, in fact, more about the area, 'between the railway and the mine' as 'waggons of ore are shunted past' that 'spray the berries with red dust'. There was no getting away from the red haematite dust in those days.
Perhaps surprisingly, there is no direct mention of life-blood draining away from Millom as the ironworks were closed down and dismantled (in several poems in A Local Habitation and Sea to the West). But Nicholson doesn't really need to make such an obvious link. In ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’ (CP p. 359) we have a vivid description of geology, iron working and local employment. This is continued in the next poem (‘The Bloody Cranesbill’) where we see the plants, the memories of the skyline ('Number Ten', the pithead) that we have come to view with Nicholson as part of the changing economics of haematite ore. So the death is portrayed not so much as blood being lost (although c.f. 'bled white of every stain of ore') as lungs collapsing; '– mines/Drowned under stagnant waters, and, 'A town's/purpose subsides with the mine' (‘The Bloody Cranesbill’).
Having looked at a few of the implications of 'blood', 'haematite' and 'ore' I have listed the poems under these headings for the reader's perusal and study. I have also included lists of some of the poems involving the colour 'red' referring directly or indirectly to haematite as well as 'brown'. The reference in ‘The Blackberry’ has already been noted. Haematite can be a dark brown-red colour. As well as the image in this poem of ‘the berries’ being sprayed ‘with red dust’ in ‘Sea to the West’ (CP p. 338) the fifteen year old boy turns home from a sunset through a 'brown drizzle'. The drizzle may not be of wet rain but of brown-stained dust and grit from the furnaces.
There are four lists below with poem titles (and page numbers in the Collected Poems) for each of my search areas.
Containing 'haematite'
Askam Visited (39)
A Street in Cumberland (122)
Fossils (216)
Mountain Limestone, The Seven Rocks (247)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
Bond Street (304)
On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks (359)
The Bloody Cranesbill (361)
Containing 'ore'
Five Rivers (11)
Egremont (14)
Cleator Moor (16)
To the River Duddon (24)
Askam Visited (39)
The Blackberry (48)
Stalingrad, 1942 (52)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
The Council of the Seven Deadly Sins (79)
The Bow in the Cloud (103)
The Orphan (218)
The Seven Rocks (242)
The Borehole (266)
The Elvers (275)
Bee Orchid at Hodbarrow (276)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
The Riddle (280)
Bond Street (304)
The Bloody Cranesbill (361)
On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks (359)
Of This Parish (416)
Old Railway Sidings Millom (427)
Brown: of the 48 poems containing this word the following might contain a link to haematite; what do you think?
For St. James 1943 (55)
The Holy Mountain (92)
Songs Unheard (152)
Pendulum Poem (154)
The Riddle (280)
Bond Street (304)
Sea to the West (338)
and for Red:
Egremont (14)
Askam Visited (39)
The Blackberry (48)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
Hodbarrow Flooded (279)
Containing 'blood'
Five Rivers (11)
Egremont (14)
Whitehaven (18)
South Cumberland, 10 May 1943 (29)
Songs of the Islands (33)
Maiden's Song (35)
Shrewsbury (42)
September in Shropshire (43)
The Blackberry (48)
Waiting for spring 1943 (50)
Stalingrad 1942 (52)
The Wood of the Self-Murdered (61)
Michaelmas (64)
Now in the Time of this Mortal Life (66)
Poem for Epiphany (72)
The Council of the Seven Deadly Sins (79)
The Garden of the Innocent (84)
The Holy Mountain (92)
The Land Under the Ice (116)
Winter Song (124)
Caedmon (137)
The Tame Hare (140)
For Emily Brontë (142)
New Year's Eve (144)
To a Child Before Birth (146)
Songs Unheard (152)
The River of Flesh (158)
The Anatomy of Desire (159)
Song from the Songless (165)
Silecroft Shore (170)
Millom Old Quarry (181)
Fossils (216)
The Seven Rocks (242)
Have You Been to London? (295)
Toadstools (342)
Nobbut God (345)
Now that I have Made My Decision (406)
Sonnet for Good Friday (407)
On Suspected Dry Rot in the Roof of a Parish Church (409)
A very brief history of iron ore mining in western Cumbria
A good online history of iron working in Cumbria can be found at Industrial History of Cumbria: http://www.cumbria-industries.org.uk/a-z-of-industries/iron-mining/ as well as the chapter, 'Man's Mark on the Land', in Norman Nicholson's Lakeland and A. Harris's publication Cumberland Iron is specifically on the Hodbarrow Mine. This book also contains information about working conditions and financial and technical problems encountered over the mine's working life (1855-1968). The Haverigg/Millom/Hodbarrow shafts were at the south of the Cumbrian coal and iron field which had mines at locations where haematite occurred relatively near the surface. A chapter in Marshall and Davies-Shiel deals with 'Coal and Iron Mining' in Cumbria.
At Egremont the ore was extracted commercially from about 1830. Nearer Millom, the settlement of 'The Hill' (4km north of Millom on the A5093) had yielded ore from 1848 and the extension of the prospecting to the Millom area followed this. The last ore was extracted in 1968, the furnaces demolished and removed. All that remains today are remoulded spoil heaps and the two sea wall barriers.
Both barriers were designed to keep the sea from encroaching on the subsiding land that contained structures such as railways and pitheads, as well as water ingress into the mine workings themselves. The Inner Barrier was a rigid concrete and masonry structure completed in 1890. It was soon realised that a further and more flexible defence was needed. This was completed in 1905 and is easily identified from transatlantic jets at 30, 000 feet. It is the last substantial remnant of the iron ore industry in the Millom area. See also WotM, July 2016, 'Skerry'.
Several of Norman Nicholson's poems mention directly, or allude to, the ironworking and mining as mentioned previously in this article and in Word of the Month 'Stope'. However, in two of Nicholson's poems there is a mention of 'Bessemer' furnace or process (‘Old Railway Sidings, Millom’ (CP p. 427) and ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’). There were never any Bessemer furnaces at Millom (see Boyd, D. (2015) Norman Nicholson, a Literary Life, p.20). The furnaces were for smelting the ore (plus limestone as flux and anthracite) to produce iron ingots or 'pigs'. The Bessemer (Gilchrist-Thomas) process was mainly used to reduce carbon impurities in iron to make steel. As David Boyd says, 'Millom was an ironworks not a steelworks'. David also points out that the 'thousand degrees Fahrenheit' (‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’) should be nearer 1500 Celsius (or 2800 Fahrenheit). Interestingly, Ted Hughes has a mention of haematite in Red:
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
In ‘Crow and the Birds’, there is a mention of 'And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare' (which also has a mention of a 'laundromat'). The links between Ted Hughes and Norman Nicholson were personal too, as they were connected through Hughes’ English teacher Ted Fisher, who also came from Millom and was Nicholson’s lifelong friend.
Harris, A. (1970) Cumberland Iron, The story of Hodbarrow Mine 1855 – 1968. (Monographs on Mining History, 2). Truro: D Bradford Barton, p. 122.
A little chemistry
In haematite, iron atoms are combined with oxygen in a molecule with a formula Fe2O3, i.e. iron is in the ferric state, denoted by Fe3+ or Fe(III). In essence, this is rust. Although the mineral may be almost black as well as dark red it produces a red 'streak' when scratched on a white abrasive plate. The mineral can be found in 'banded iron formations' (BIF), usually of Pre-Cambrian age (2400 Ma; million years ago). These BIFs were almost certainly laid down on the sea bed at the time. However, the haematite ores of Cumbria are much younger, being emplaced by metasomatism of hypersaline brine up to 120º C in post Triassic, 200Ma, times. As well forms with a developed crystal structure (specularite, triclinic system) haematite can be found in another common form resembling a kidney, hence kidney ore. An example can be found in the Millom Museum. A long narrow form, fragments of kidney ore, is also known as 'pencil ore' (see WotM March 2015; 'stope').
You may remember from school chemistry that the subject can be divided into organic and inorganic. The former relating to everything from plastics to proteins and living cells with carbon atoms in molecules as chains and rings, for example. The inorganic area, as well as elements such as iron, includes carbon as carbon dioxide and monoxide but also silica and the range of elements in the periodic table.
Haemoglobin is an organic molecule with a ring structure at its centre. The 'globin' comes from the many sub-units of globular protein. This ring is known as a porphyrin. In the centre of the ring is an iron atom (haem) in a complex between four nitrogen atoms on the inside of the porphyrin unit; haemoglobin. In respiration, oxygen is transferred by the haeme component as oxyhaemeoglobin, after giving up the oxygen it is known as deoxyhaemoglobin. These two forms have different colours, corresponding to bright red (arterial, oxygenated) to blackish venous, deoxygenated, blood).
The porphyrin ring can have another metal at its centre, specifically two copper atoms and this provides an oxygen transfer medium in some invertebrates. Oxygenation causes a colour change between the colourless Cu(I) deoxygenated form and the blue Cu(II) oxygenated form. The oxygen transfer system is somewhat different from that in haemoglobin.
Incidentally the H of H5N8 (avian 'flu) stands for haemagglutinin (or HA) a virus surface glycoprotein that recognizes the host, binds to cell membranes, especially in respiratory tracts, and mediates virus fusion and disgorgement of nucleic acids into the cell.
The phrase 'we are star dust' (Joni Mitchell, 'Woodstock') and its relation to the formation of elements (Hydrogen and Helium) in 'the Big Bang' (that is, Big Bang nucleosynthesis) is now commonplace. But there is a further stage, stellar /supernova nucleosynthesis. We tend to think of carbon here but it applies to all elements beyond hydrogen and helium in the periodic table. The iron isotope 56Fe is a critical element of this process. This is, simply put, the reason Fe is so common in the earth's crust. Sir Fred Hoyle (who once owned Cockley Moor) was instrumental in this idea. A review paper by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle (known as B2FH) put these ideas forward in 1957. William Fowler gained a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 for his contribution. Hoyle was not a recipient and some still think this was a travesty. However he was knighted, has a section of dual carriageway named after him (Sir Fred Hoyle Way) in Bingley and wrote several SF novels, including The Black Cloud and, with John Elliot, the script for the TV series A for Andromeda. As far as I know Hoyle never met Nicholson, a pity, as I think they would have got on.
An Excursion to Backbarrow
Whilst we are linking iron chemistry with Cumbria it is worth mentioning 'Dolly Blue'. Not, as far as I can find, mentioned in Nicholson's poetry but it is mentioned in Nicholson’s book Portrait of the Lakes as 'washing blue at Backbarrow’ (p. 138). Traffic on the A590 rushes past Backbarrow now, although you may visit the Whitewater Hotel (affected by the 2009 floods on the River Leven). The Wikipedia entry gives a good idea of the hamlet and mentions the blast furnace set up in 1711 as well as dolly blue/washing blue that was manufactured there by the Reckitt Company. I remember (about 1975) seeing the factory and the blue smudges around the loading bays (see also ‘Old and Interesting: Laundry Blue’ ). By this stage of a brief ramble into south Lakeland Industrial Archaeology, not to mention the Big Bang, you may be wondering what this has to do with iron, especially having said that haematite is essentially red and its Fe(II) form light green or blue. Well, Prussian blue or Berlin or Turnbull's blue is an iron-cyanide compound with an approximate formula Fe7(CN)18. Now ferrous, Fe(II), salts are water-soluble and this is the case for ferrous cyanide which has little colour. Oxidation to Fe(III) makes it insoluble or colloidal but the colour changes to a deep blue. Despite the name cyanide, it is not poisonous; indeed, in a pure medical form it can act as an antidote for ingested thallium or radioactive caesium. Ultramarine was originally ground lapis lazuli, now made artificially, it has no iron or cyanide associated with it.
And to Lindale in Cartmel .......
It is generally considered that 'Ironbridge' in Shropshire is the start of the industrial revolution with iron at its centre. But Cumbrians (and Lancastrians as Lindale used to be in Lancashire) know that John Wilkinson (1728-1808) of Lindale was the initiator. His experiments on the manufacture of cast iron were based on a long tradition of iron making in the Cumbrian fells. It was he who produced the iron for, and helped design, the bridge at Ironbridge. Read more about him at the Wikipedia page. His home at Castle Head now belongs to the Field Studies Council.
A note on the searches
Lest anyone thinks I have spent long hours checking through all the Nicholson poems, let alone those of Ted Hughes and others, I should mention that I have used an on-line source. This is the ProQuest 'Literature Online' bibliography. This includes, it claims, authors from the eighth century to the present day and more than 350 000 works of poetry, drama and prose. I was able to log on to this via the University of Sheffield. As well as poems it includes literary works in general, criticism and drama. So, for example, I could easily search for 'haematite' and, as well as the Nicholson poems listed, I could also find that Neil Curry uses the word in his poem ‘Cave Paintings’. I have not tried to use a scripting language to analyse word or phrase frequencies in digital text files; I leave this task for others.
Brian Whalley
If you – or someone you know – might wish to contribute a short article for this column, please do contact us. We are not only interested in dialect – or near-dialect – usage, but also in a focus on any word which might, in the context of Nicholson’s poetry, drama or prose, contribute to its particularity, to a sense of Northerness… Click HERE for our
contact details.
A good online history of iron working in Cumbria can be found at Industrial History of Cumbria: http://www.cumbria-industries.org.uk/a-z-of-industries/iron-mining/ as well as the chapter, 'Man's Mark on the Land', in Norman Nicholson's Lakeland and A. Harris's publication Cumberland Iron is specifically on the Hodbarrow Mine. This book also contains information about working conditions and financial and technical problems encountered over the mine's working life (1855-1968). The Haverigg/Millom/Hodbarrow shafts were at the south of the Cumbrian coal and iron field which had mines at locations where haematite occurred relatively near the surface. A chapter in Marshall and Davies-Shiel deals with 'Coal and Iron Mining' in Cumbria.
At Egremont the ore was extracted commercially from about 1830. Nearer Millom, the settlement of 'The Hill' (4km north of Millom on the A5093) had yielded ore from 1848 and the extension of the prospecting to the Millom area followed this. The last ore was extracted in 1968, the furnaces demolished and removed. All that remains today are remoulded spoil heaps and the two sea wall barriers.
Both barriers were designed to keep the sea from encroaching on the subsiding land that contained structures such as railways and pitheads, as well as water ingress into the mine workings themselves. The Inner Barrier was a rigid concrete and masonry structure completed in 1890. It was soon realised that a further and more flexible defence was needed. This was completed in 1905 and is easily identified from transatlantic jets at 30, 000 feet. It is the last substantial remnant of the iron ore industry in the Millom area. See also WotM, July 2016, 'Skerry'.
Several of Norman Nicholson's poems mention directly, or allude to, the ironworking and mining as mentioned previously in this article and in Word of the Month 'Stope'. However, in two of Nicholson's poems there is a mention of 'Bessemer' furnace or process (‘Old Railway Sidings, Millom’ (CP p. 427) and ‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’). There were never any Bessemer furnaces at Millom (see Boyd, D. (2015) Norman Nicholson, a Literary Life, p.20). The furnaces were for smelting the ore (plus limestone as flux and anthracite) to produce iron ingots or 'pigs'. The Bessemer (Gilchrist-Thomas) process was mainly used to reduce carbon impurities in iron to make steel. As David Boyd says, 'Millom was an ironworks not a steelworks'. David also points out that the 'thousand degrees Fahrenheit' (‘On the Dismantling of Millom Ironworks’) should be nearer 1500 Celsius (or 2800 Fahrenheit). Interestingly, Ted Hughes has a mention of haematite in Red:
Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.
In ‘Crow and the Birds’, there is a mention of 'And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare' (which also has a mention of a 'laundromat'). The links between Ted Hughes and Norman Nicholson were personal too, as they were connected through Hughes’ English teacher Ted Fisher, who also came from Millom and was Nicholson’s lifelong friend.
Harris, A. (1970) Cumberland Iron, The story of Hodbarrow Mine 1855 – 1968. (Monographs on Mining History, 2). Truro: D Bradford Barton, p. 122.
A little chemistry
In haematite, iron atoms are combined with oxygen in a molecule with a formula Fe2O3, i.e. iron is in the ferric state, denoted by Fe3+ or Fe(III). In essence, this is rust. Although the mineral may be almost black as well as dark red it produces a red 'streak' when scratched on a white abrasive plate. The mineral can be found in 'banded iron formations' (BIF), usually of Pre-Cambrian age (2400 Ma; million years ago). These BIFs were almost certainly laid down on the sea bed at the time. However, the haematite ores of Cumbria are much younger, being emplaced by metasomatism of hypersaline brine up to 120º C in post Triassic, 200Ma, times. As well forms with a developed crystal structure (specularite, triclinic system) haematite can be found in another common form resembling a kidney, hence kidney ore. An example can be found in the Millom Museum. A long narrow form, fragments of kidney ore, is also known as 'pencil ore' (see WotM March 2015; 'stope').
You may remember from school chemistry that the subject can be divided into organic and inorganic. The former relating to everything from plastics to proteins and living cells with carbon atoms in molecules as chains and rings, for example. The inorganic area, as well as elements such as iron, includes carbon as carbon dioxide and monoxide but also silica and the range of elements in the periodic table.
Haemoglobin is an organic molecule with a ring structure at its centre. The 'globin' comes from the many sub-units of globular protein. This ring is known as a porphyrin. In the centre of the ring is an iron atom (haem) in a complex between four nitrogen atoms on the inside of the porphyrin unit; haemoglobin. In respiration, oxygen is transferred by the haeme component as oxyhaemeoglobin, after giving up the oxygen it is known as deoxyhaemoglobin. These two forms have different colours, corresponding to bright red (arterial, oxygenated) to blackish venous, deoxygenated, blood).
The porphyrin ring can have another metal at its centre, specifically two copper atoms and this provides an oxygen transfer medium in some invertebrates. Oxygenation causes a colour change between the colourless Cu(I) deoxygenated form and the blue Cu(II) oxygenated form. The oxygen transfer system is somewhat different from that in haemoglobin.
Incidentally the H of H5N8 (avian 'flu) stands for haemagglutinin (or HA) a virus surface glycoprotein that recognizes the host, binds to cell membranes, especially in respiratory tracts, and mediates virus fusion and disgorgement of nucleic acids into the cell.
The phrase 'we are star dust' (Joni Mitchell, 'Woodstock') and its relation to the formation of elements (Hydrogen and Helium) in 'the Big Bang' (that is, Big Bang nucleosynthesis) is now commonplace. But there is a further stage, stellar /supernova nucleosynthesis. We tend to think of carbon here but it applies to all elements beyond hydrogen and helium in the periodic table. The iron isotope 56Fe is a critical element of this process. This is, simply put, the reason Fe is so common in the earth's crust. Sir Fred Hoyle (who once owned Cockley Moor) was instrumental in this idea. A review paper by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle (known as B2FH) put these ideas forward in 1957. William Fowler gained a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 for his contribution. Hoyle was not a recipient and some still think this was a travesty. However he was knighted, has a section of dual carriageway named after him (Sir Fred Hoyle Way) in Bingley and wrote several SF novels, including The Black Cloud and, with John Elliot, the script for the TV series A for Andromeda. As far as I know Hoyle never met Nicholson, a pity, as I think they would have got on.
An Excursion to Backbarrow
Whilst we are linking iron chemistry with Cumbria it is worth mentioning 'Dolly Blue'. Not, as far as I can find, mentioned in Nicholson's poetry but it is mentioned in Nicholson’s book Portrait of the Lakes as 'washing blue at Backbarrow’ (p. 138). Traffic on the A590 rushes past Backbarrow now, although you may visit the Whitewater Hotel (affected by the 2009 floods on the River Leven). The Wikipedia entry gives a good idea of the hamlet and mentions the blast furnace set up in 1711 as well as dolly blue/washing blue that was manufactured there by the Reckitt Company. I remember (about 1975) seeing the factory and the blue smudges around the loading bays (see also ‘Old and Interesting: Laundry Blue’ ). By this stage of a brief ramble into south Lakeland Industrial Archaeology, not to mention the Big Bang, you may be wondering what this has to do with iron, especially having said that haematite is essentially red and its Fe(II) form light green or blue. Well, Prussian blue or Berlin or Turnbull's blue is an iron-cyanide compound with an approximate formula Fe7(CN)18. Now ferrous, Fe(II), salts are water-soluble and this is the case for ferrous cyanide which has little colour. Oxidation to Fe(III) makes it insoluble or colloidal but the colour changes to a deep blue. Despite the name cyanide, it is not poisonous; indeed, in a pure medical form it can act as an antidote for ingested thallium or radioactive caesium. Ultramarine was originally ground lapis lazuli, now made artificially, it has no iron or cyanide associated with it.
And to Lindale in Cartmel .......
It is generally considered that 'Ironbridge' in Shropshire is the start of the industrial revolution with iron at its centre. But Cumbrians (and Lancastrians as Lindale used to be in Lancashire) know that John Wilkinson (1728-1808) of Lindale was the initiator. His experiments on the manufacture of cast iron were based on a long tradition of iron making in the Cumbrian fells. It was he who produced the iron for, and helped design, the bridge at Ironbridge. Read more about him at the Wikipedia page. His home at Castle Head now belongs to the Field Studies Council.
A note on the searches
Lest anyone thinks I have spent long hours checking through all the Nicholson poems, let alone those of Ted Hughes and others, I should mention that I have used an on-line source. This is the ProQuest 'Literature Online' bibliography. This includes, it claims, authors from the eighth century to the present day and more than 350 000 works of poetry, drama and prose. I was able to log on to this via the University of Sheffield. As well as poems it includes literary works in general, criticism and drama. So, for example, I could easily search for 'haematite' and, as well as the Nicholson poems listed, I could also find that Neil Curry uses the word in his poem ‘Cave Paintings’. I have not tried to use a scripting language to analyse word or phrase frequencies in digital text files; I leave this task for others.
Brian Whalley
If you – or someone you know – might wish to contribute a short article for this column, please do contact us. We are not only interested in dialect – or near-dialect – usage, but also in a focus on any word which might, in the context of Nicholson’s poetry, drama or prose, contribute to its particularity, to a sense of Northerness… Click HERE for our
contact details.