Spirit of the North: Exhibition and Podcast

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England people and places, we set photographer John Kippin a challenge to explore the Spirit of the North.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne. I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer. And I have been photographing in and around the North of England for many years because that’s where I’m based.

Narrator: On his quest, John captured photographs of some of the North’s most historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Bessie Surtees House in Newcastle.

In this podcast series we’re digging a little deeper in to the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We’ll explore the North’s history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence. And we’ll question what the Spirit of the North really is.
In this episode, we’re exploring art, music, theatre and poetry. John took pictures at the Salford Lads Club, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and the Casbah in Liverpool.

John Kippin: A lot has been spoken and talked about in terms of cultural regeneration. I think the art has a very significant role to play. It does to a certain extent, help to mend places. The damage that has been caused in a sense by sometimes great companies, but they committed to a place in so, much as it serves their interests and then they move on. So, they pull out, it’s uneconomically viable in the way that they consider their economics to make things viable.

Narrator: Poet Rachel Bower celebrates the vibrant poetry scene in Sheffield.

Rachel Bower: A lot of the works have now been turned in to creative spaces. So, art spaces and spaces for other kind of creative people. There’s like poetry studios or art studios. So, I guess they have kind of been kept alive in that way but they’re not creating the steel anymore.

I’m a poet and I’m also an academic. I live in Sheffield and I work at the University of Leeds as well. Like I research poetry and write poetry and I also founded Verse Matters which is a poetry and arts night in Sheffield.

The idea is to create a supportive space in which people can share their work and to showcase the work of under-represented artists. There’s always a mix of experienced performers and new people who have never read or played before. And there’s poetry and music. And people who are refugees, people who are homeless have written and come and performed and/or have come along to listen to start with and then have got writing and then have come and shared their work.

I actually moved here because my partner got a job at the university. I was just finishing a PhD off in Cambridge and he got a job here. So, we moved up here and I didn’t really know very much about Sheffield I guess at that point and moved here kind of with an open mind, but a bit of trepidation of, oh what’s gonna be like, and what’s it gonna be like moving back North again after not having lived North for a while. I just loved it. I think it’s a really open and friendly place and when I decided to set up like verse matters, it was just amazing. You decide to do something and everyone like, comes together and does it. Whereas other places you could have an idea and it wouldn’t take off in the same way I think.

The idea of the crucible, of a smelting pot of things going in and changing in to something else that’s, Sheffield’s like that. And Sheffield is like very alive with like arts and grass roots community based stuff. There’s a lot going on. And I think often people don’t associate Sheffield with that kind of creativity but actually there’s loads going on.

Narrator: Photographer John Kippin.

John Kippin: Now I think it’s appropriate that artists are encouraged to use old buildings that become available because the developers seldom see the virtue in them in terms of housing. They’re very slow in order to do that. Art is certainly part of the gentrification process. The artists probably don’t like being part of that. But it’s inevitable I think. They use spaces like the space we’re sitting in now.

We all know that artists moved here probably 10 years ago when the various industries that were housed here moved out. They’ll be here perhaps another five years until the developers move in and either convert the building in to housing or knock it down or make it in to another shopping centre or something. Whatever. That will happen with these city centre sites. And in a sense then the artists will move further away, further out of town or maybe to another town I don’t know. And I think that movement has been well established. It happens and you know we have to embrace I think. It’s useful. It’s a useful thing. It does help to heal neighbourhoods.

Narrator: The Northern music scene is famous the world over. Bands such as the Beatles, The Stone Roses, Oasis, The Smiths, have all written songs about places that shaped them. Alex Mearns is from Harrogate in North Yorkshire. Growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s, Northern bands have shaped his passion for music and his pride in his home county.

Alex Mearns: As a teenager I got obsessed with Oasis who are from Manchester. Then, I learnt the history of what inspired them and bands, Stone Roses, The Smiths, New Order, they all come from Manchester. Then bands from Greater Manchester like The Verve and then from Leeds you’ve got the Kaiser Chiefs and Sheffield you’ve got Arctic Monkeys and Pulp.

There was a period where I sort of went against my Yorkshire roots and used to just mimic the Gallagher brothers because they were sort of my everything. And yeah, Northern music I think it absolutely trumps bands from London.

Maybe it is the weather. I remember hearing Mani from the Stone Roses talk about why so many good bands come from Manchester. He said, its because it rains all the time, there’s nothing else to do so you’re gonna be in your bedroom with a guitar or a bass guitar or a set of drums. Maybe that was music helped out people on an evening who were doing jobs that they didn’t want to do, working really tough conditions in these factories, in these mines where they would go to a working men’s club and listen to people play music. I’m sure that happened up and down the country but you can see that there’s just such a back catalogue of great bands from the North since the 60s. There must be something in that.

You go to a festival like Leeds Fest and you’ve got 60,000 teenagers shouting ‘Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire’, or where they’re at Parklife Festival and it’s ‘Manchester la-la-la, Manchester la-la-la’, you know, you don’t hear people from Surrey singing that about their county. It’s a badge of honour and you … and it’s something that will always be with me and I think all my friends.

Narrator: John chose the Salford Lads Club because of its connection to The Smiths.

John Kippin: There’s the paradox of the exterior which is unremarkable in some ways. So, as a building it’s not a structure that is important. Actually what is important is the kind of history of association with the building. And I think that’s a key point to think about, where the value lies here. You know, it’s not in bricks and mortar always, it’s sometimes in other areas. And so, The Smiths, somehow they have imprinted their presence on that building in such a way that it is impossible to conceive of it without that presence having taken place because that room in itself is nothing. It’s a badly lit room with lots of – you know – scruffy pictures on the wall. It’s also a shrine for people to visit. They’re not interested in the Boys Club which is kind of an anachronism really in some ways. We need to invest in our society a little bit more to kind of create different kinds of values. And of course again, I believe that that’s where the arts come in that they do inculcate values which are actually worth having.

Narrator: And of course we couldn’t leave out the Fab Four. John photographed a lesser known Beatles site in Liverpool, the Casbah [Coffee Club].

John Kippin: The Casbah is one of those places I just felt, you know my heart sank when I saw it. It’s kind of run down, it’s a bit scruffy, its unremarkable, but you know, the Beatles used the Casbah. I mean they were central to the development of this idea of a venue in some you know kind of slightly out of the way Liverpool suburb. Something was happening here and something which is so remarkable really. And yet, the building is unremarkable. Yes, it had to be there. It had to be there to think about why it was there really. And I think sometimes the banality of something can be quite powerful in its way. If you understand the story, it transcends you know its physicality.

Narrator: Michael Lacey and Bryan Biggs are cultural archivists at the Blue Coat, the oldest art centre in the country.

Michael Lacey: It’s quite an easy city to exist in as a bit of an oddball or as somebody who makes unusual things. There’s a lot of people in Liverpool who I don’t think would function as well elsewhere.

Bryan Biggs: It is a port city. And it’s got … it’s had like 300 years as a port, you know a serious port city connected to the world. That’s when it had those connections with the Americas. And that’s really what made Liverpool. America or the Americas, made Liverpool really. And there’s a dark history because of the slavery. The slave trade which merchants made money out of which was then put in to this building here. So, this building, the Blue Coat and other institutions were funded largely from profits of either slavery or trades that were connected like, sugar, cotton and tobacco. But at the same time there is that sort of sense of a new world out there just over the horizon.

Michael Lacey: As obvious as it is, I was obsessed with the Beatles when I was a kid. And I got so much out of being in the same city as them and feeling that kind of weird sense of identification and – you know – my road ends on Penny Lane. So, when I would walk to school I would pass the bank and the butchers and the barbers or whatever from that song. That all felt really kind of alive to me.

There’s a whole core of bohemia in Liverpool around Lark Lane that’s kind of stayed there for many, many years ‘cause they’ve got cheap rents and Keith’s Wine Bar there. And you know, quite a lot of the people who live around there, who are involved in kind of avant-garde music, for example have played in the Blue Coat in recent years alongside a group called the Immex Ensemble who are a really exciting thing happening in Liverpool at the moment. They’re kind of a small kind of eight piece orchestra of classically trained musicians who do every year, they’re kind of funded by the Arts Council to do a season of collaborations with more avant-garde or electronic musicians so they can kind of bring an orchestral sensibility and a bit of a kind of fuller sound to those collaborations. And one of the things I found really interesting about those gigs that I’ve made a real effort to always come and see at the Blue Coat ‘cause they’re always really, really good, is that a lot of the people they were collaborating with, I put on in gigs in Liverpool 15 years ago at the Magnet when they were doing very different things. So, Liverpool really is a place where people can seemingly dig in to their niche interests for a very long time.

Narrator: So, is John any closer to finding the elusive Spirit of the North?

John Kippin: It has a kind of … and I think this is very difficult and very slippery, but it does have an identity which is, I think, a real one. I’m always trying to pin it down. I don’t think you can say what it is. I couldn’t say what it was. But I think it’s something that only exists in relationship to what it isn’t. And we all know what it isn’t, it’s not the South and it’s not London.

So, it has that sort of potential to be something, you know which we could talk about. Nobody’s talking about the spirit of the South. I mean, why are they not? I don’t know why they’re not? It’s not something that people would say of the South. They don’t conceive of it. And I think because they perceive the North as in some way other, and it’s the otherness of the North. And Northerners in a sense accept that and understand that by virtue of the fact that they are not in the South and vice versa.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. In the next episode, we’re looking at the connection between coal, people and power.

If you would like to get involved in the conversation use the hashtag #SpiritofTheNorth. And if you enjoyed this episode please do give us a nice rating and review.

Once again, you can see John Kippin’s photographs this summer at Bessie Surtees house in Newcastle or on the Historic England website.

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England people and places we sent photographer John Kippin a challenge to explore the spirit of the north.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne, I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer and I’ve been photographing in and around the north of England for many years because that’s where I’m based.

Narrator: On his quest John captured photographs of some of the North’s historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Bessie Surtees House in Newcastle. In this podcast series we’re digging a little deeper into the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We’ll explore the North’s history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence and we’ll question what the Spirit of the North really is.

In this episode we’re looking at the connection between manufacturing, trade and the North. John chose to capture images from the steel industry in Sheffield, the Victoria Quarter in Leeds and from the former salts mill in Saltaire.

John Kippin: Being the cradle of the industrial revolution, this is where these things happened first and it’s not to say they didn’t happen in other parts of the country, such as perhaps Wales or Scotland – they certainly did – but they were very largely driven through the enterprises and many of the people in the North of England.

Narrator: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as mining, the economy of the North was dominated by heavy industry such as weaving, ship building and steel making.

John Kippin: Steel is crucial to the building of what we call our culture now, it’s a central infrastructural requirement. When thinking about steel, rather than say looking at Redcar or somewhere like that, I thought that Sheffield is the place really which was built very much on the manufacture of steel. And very many of the processes that were exported around the world were developed in Sheffield, things like Huntsman Steel, which was a very early process and then later, the Bessemer furnaces which found ways of making better cleaner steel more safely, although they weren’t very safe at all. It was relatively speaking from the earlier processes which were really dangerous.

Narrator: Andy Cole has been forging steel for 42 years and runs one of the last steel forges in Sheffield.

Andy Cole: [Power hammer sounds]. This is the original forge, Portland Works, it dates back to about 1870-ish. Those two machines are the original machines that used to run off a line shaft when we used to have a steam engine. The only difference is they’ve got an electric motor. They forge the steel into shapes. Eric Wigfull, the name was who set it up in 1958, and then about 15, 20 years ago he retired, and I bought the business.

And it forges that, it comes in a flat bar, so you make that and then you draw that out. [Metallic noise]

[Humming sound]. Unfortunately in 2011 I had to close the doors of the business as Wigfull Tools, now I’m just Andy Cole Tools and I just do out-work for different people. Eric Wigfull, I’ve known him since I was three year old and he said come down do a bit of Saturday work then obviously, I just stayed, he couldn’t get rid of me, I was 14, 42 years ago. Same as every young lad, I was making sandwiches, sweeping up and I just loved it and I’ve been here ever since, I should have been at school, but I preferred to come here.

Building furnaces to forging to repairing the machines to grinding to making me own tools, they’re all what Eric showed me all the years and that was it. Obviously, the first thing I do is I come in and light the furnace, once the furnace is up to temperature, I’m either forging on the hammers or I do press work which is like tanging, that sort of thing, bending. I could be on any of these furnaces, in fact sometimes I’d work three in one day. I’ve done one job and jumped on to another and then another one.

Narrator: So why did John Kippin choose to photograph here?

John Kippin: It’s another one of those industries that is a dangerous industry, many people injured and not fabulously well paid, conditions not terribly pleasant but is also key to our economy and our economy is very much based on transport and infrastructure, the making of cars, making of trains and aeroplanes and all sorts, all relying to a certain extent on steel and of course the construction industry in particular.

Andy Cole: [Power tools sounds]. In Sheffield before that Portland Works were built you’d have a forger up one end of town and then you’d have a heat treater at other end of town and then you’d have a grinder down there, so it were going all round Sheffield, whereas Portland Works brought it all under one shed, so you’d just move around the firm rather than around Sheffield. It was heart-breaking because it was, well still is my life, it was my life, that’s all I’ve ever known. [Metallic noises]

A lot of young people don’t want this sort of work, it’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s noisy, it’s everything that most people, young people don’t want anymore, and they want to earn money but a clean job. The old saying there’s brass where there’s muck, yes, it’s still there but you’ve got to be willing to do it and a lot of the young people nowadays aren’t willing to put the effort in. That’s why I’m helping two young blacksmiths because they’re willing to put the effort in the forge, on the spring hammers, they’ve done a bit of blacksmithing, now I’m showing them proper work. And production work, whereas they’re just doing one thing, this is now like, I said now you need to know this. I’ve got a young lad that he’s enthusiastic and everything and I said look, I might go another ten years, I want to show you things because I’ve got four kids and none of them are interested, they’ve all got their own decent jobs, I said it’s yours if you’re willing to put the effort in and he is, he’s doing alright. I’m showing him how to set the hammers up and work the hammers.

Narrator: In Leeds, the Victoria Quarter is a striking example of the city’s industrial heritage being re-purposed for the 21st century; John Kippin again.

John Kippin: I didn’t want this terrible stereotype of the North to be, you know I’m very happy to say that the North, yes it was built on coal, it was built on steel, it was built on innovation but not to say, okay, well it may have done all of those things and it was the power house for many, many years, driving certainly the UK economy but it also had a tremendous amount of other things. It had a tremendous amount of arts and culture, poetry, music, beauty and so I didn’t want those rather dour stereotypes to predominate which is why I wanted to look at a place like Leeds which people think of as an industrial town, but it has some of the most beautiful shopping that I’ve seen anywhere for example. Okay it’s shopping, and we can say well shopping’s not very important, but it is very important. People like to shop, it’s an essential part of their leisure activities these days, this was happening in Victorian times in Leeds, so you saw it there first.

Narrator: Alex Mearns grew up in the nearby Yorkshire town of Harrogate

Alex Mearns: [Voices and footsteps sounds]. Leeds is a fantastic example of one side of the street steeped in history and Victoria quarter is this beautiful old shopping centre, fantastic upper middle class shops and places like Vivienne Westwood and Dior and stuff like that, then behind Victoria quarter you have Leeds market which has been there for hundreds of years and the traders have traded there their whole lives and previous generations have traded there their whole lives, so a city like Leeds identifies or highlights that progression of remembering your history but refurbishing it.

Narrator: Marina Nenadic grew up in Leeds.

Marina Nenadic: [Sounds of market trade]. I think the Victoria Quarter is a really interesting place and it’s quite a precious place for a lot people who grew up in Leeds. Victoria quarter is right next to Kirkgate market and that’s where my grandma used to take me to do the shopping. It used to be the busiest place or maybe I was just very small and I remember being dragged around Kirkgate market to haggle for veg and fruit and meat and then afterwards we’d go sit outside and have fish and chips sat on a bench right outside the market in what was, I think it was a car park and it’s that car park and that street which is now been built into the new shopping centre, which is very beautiful and obviously has been built in a way that is sympathetic to the historical surroundings. A sight of wonder, it’s so colourful, everything’s gold and rainbow-coloured and it all looks very luxurious and that’s what that area is reminiscent to me in that way.

Narrator: Bradford born poet, Rachel Bower grew up among the old textile mills of West Yorkshire like Salts Mill, a former mill turned arts centre.

Rachel Bower: I guess the traces of industry are everywhere, industry is still big but it’s not there in the same way that it was. I actually recently went back to Bradford; my family are there. I went to Salts Mill with my grandma who’s 91 and she used to be a piece worker, not at the mill, she used to be a piece worker who was picking the cloth. We took her around it and for her it was just really present, whereas I guess for us, looking around now it was a bit like a museum almost. So I worked at Salts Mill in the diner when I was young, I was a kind of a diner girl. That’s where I saw Tony Harrison read for the first time and that was really influential because I just heard poetry in this broad Bradford accent that my family had, and I was like, ‘wow, this is amazing’, and I saw Northern Broadsides do a play on the top floor and they had to clear out the dead pigeons, and it is a massive expanse, it’s an amazing, amazing space. It hasn’t been changed very much from when the machines were up there. It was really influential I guess what’s been done in that mill since it changed from being a textile mill to an arts space, it was really amazing.

I always think of arriving on a Saturday morning for work in my little mini, I just think of sun on windows after windows after windows, you just see that big expanse that’s next to railway and the car park and it’s really beautiful I think. And then the other side, I think it’s quite different, it’s less busy and I feel like it’s quite a quiet, almost isolating but inside it’s bustling and quite different. I always think of lilies because there’s always big white lilies everywhere and you can smell the lilies and I was always covered in lily pollen. It’s just noisy I guess, even now, even after the mill’s not doing what it was doing, the diner’s busy and it’s kind of clanky and the book shop is less so but it’s still kind of chat and I think it really informs who I am and how I write, and I guess just being surrounded by those old buildings and it being just part of school life maybe has informed how I write, I don’t know.

Narrator: Why did John Kippin take photographs of Salts Mill?

John Kippin: Salts Mill is one of those interesting places that was built around an industry, it’s a mill town effectively and it’s the most perfectly preserved example of such a place. It’s rather a beautiful mill as well and it’s been very nicely kept going. It does have a function now, it has a real function. I think that’s part of its story. I think often the problem is that we don’t expect change to happen without, we kind of tend to insist that it happens but we don’t really cushion the effects of that change and we’ve seen that throughout the North I think.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Spirit of North, a podcast series from Historic England. In the next episode: the rich history of arts and culture in the North. If you would like to get involved in the conversation use the hashtag #SpiritofTheNorth and if you enjoyed this episode, please do give us a nice rating and review. Once again you can see John Kippin’s photographs this summer at Bessie Surtees House in Newcastle or on the Historic England website.

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England people and places, we set photographer John Kippin a challenge to explore the Spirit of the North.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne. I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer. And I have been photographing in and around the North of England for many years because that’s where I’m based.

Narrator: On his quest, John captured photographs of some of the North’s most historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Bessie Surtees House in Newcastle.

In this podcast series we’re digging a little deeper in to the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We’ll explore the North’s history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence. And we’ll question what the Spirit of the North really is.
In this episode, we’re exploring art, music, theatre and poetry. John took pictures at the Salford Lads Club, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and the Casbah in Liverpool.

John Kippin: A lot has been spoken and talked about in terms of cultural regeneration. I think the art has a very significant role to play. It does to a certain extent, help to mend places. The damage that has been caused in a sense by sometimes great companies, but they committed to a place in so, much as it serves their interests and then they move on. So, they pull out, it’s uneconomically viable in the way that they consider their economics to make things viable.

Narrator: Poet Rachel Bower celebrates the vibrant poetry scene in Sheffield.

Rachel Bower: A lot of the works have now been turned in to creative spaces. So, art spaces and spaces for other kind of creative people. There’s like poetry studios or art studios. So, I guess they have kind of been kept alive in that way but they’re not creating the steel anymore.

I’m a poet and I’m also an academic. I live in Sheffield and I work at the University of Leeds as well. Like I research poetry and write poetry and I also founded Verse Matters which is a poetry and arts night in Sheffield.

The idea is to create a supportive space in which people can share their work and to showcase the work of under-represented artists. There’s always a mix of experienced performers and new people who have never read or played before. And there’s poetry and music. And people who are refugees, people who are homeless have written and come and performed and/or have come along to listen to start with and then have got writing and then have come and shared their work.

I actually moved here because my partner got a job at the university. I was just finishing a PhD off in Cambridge and he got a job here. So, we moved up here and I didn’t really know very much about Sheffield I guess at that point and moved here kind of with an open mind, but a bit of trepidation of, oh what’s gonna be like, and what’s it gonna be like moving back North again after not having lived North for a while. I just loved it. I think it’s a really open and friendly place and when I decided to set up like verse matters, it was just amazing. You decide to do something and everyone like, comes together and does it. Whereas other places you could have an idea and it wouldn’t take off in the same way I think.

The idea of the crucible, of a smelting pot of things going in and changing in to something else that’s, Sheffield’s like that. And Sheffield is like very alive with like arts and grass roots community based stuff. There’s a lot going on. And I think often people don’t associate Sheffield with that kind of creativity but actually there’s loads going on.

Narrator: Photographer John Kippin.

John Kippin: Now I think it’s appropriate that artists are encouraged to use old buildings that become available because the developers seldom see the virtue in them in terms of housing. They’re very slow in order to do that. Art is certainly part of the gentrification process. The artists probably don’t like being part of that. But it’s inevitable I think. They use spaces like the space we’re sitting in now.

We all know that artists moved here probably 10 years ago when the various industries that were housed here moved out. They’ll be here perhaps another five years until the developers move in and either convert the building in to housing or knock it down or make it in to another shopping centre or something. Whatever. That will happen with these city centre sites. And in a sense then the artists will move further away, further out of town or maybe to another town I don’t know. And I think that movement has been well established. It happens and you know we have to embrace I think. It’s useful. It’s a useful thing. It does help to heal neighbourhoods.

Narrator: The Northern music scene is famous the world over. Bands such as the Beatles, The Stone Roses, Oasis, The Smiths, have all written songs about places that shaped them. Alex Mearns is from Harrogate in North Yorkshire. Growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s, Northern bands have shaped his passion for music and his pride in his home county.

Alex Mearns: As a teenager I got obsessed with Oasis who are from Manchester. Then, I learnt the history of what inspired them and bands, Stone Roses, The Smiths, New Order, they all come from Manchester. Then bands from Greater Manchester like The Verve and then from Leeds you’ve got the Kaiser Chiefs and Sheffield you’ve got Arctic Monkeys and Pulp.

There was a period where I sort of went against my Yorkshire roots and used to just mimic the Gallagher brothers because they were sort of my everything. And yeah, Northern music I think it absolutely trumps bands from London.

Maybe it is the weather. I remember hearing Mani from the Stone Roses talk about why so many good bands come from Manchester. He said, its because it rains all the time, there’s nothing else to do so you’re gonna be in your bedroom with a guitar or a bass guitar or a set of drums. Maybe that was music helped out people on an evening who were doing jobs that they didn’t want to do, working really tough conditions in these factories, in these mines where they would go to a working men’s club and listen to people play music. I’m sure that happened up and down the country but you can see that there’s just such a back catalogue of great bands from the North since the 60s. There must be something in that.

You go to a festival like Leeds Fest and you’ve got 60,000 teenagers shouting ‘Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire’, or where they’re at Parklife Festival and it’s ‘Manchester la-la-la, Manchester la-la-la’, you know, you don’t hear people from Surrey singing that about their county. It’s a badge of honour and you … and it’s something that will always be with me and I think all my friends.

Narrator: John chose the Salford Lads Club because of its connection to The Smiths.

John Kippin: There’s the paradox of the exterior which is unremarkable in some ways. So, as a building it’s not a structure that is important. Actually what is important is the kind of history of association with the building. And I think that’s a key point to think about, where the value lies here. You know, it’s not in bricks and mortar always, it’s sometimes in other areas. And so, The Smiths, somehow they have imprinted their presence on that building in such a way that it is impossible to conceive of it without that presence having taken place because that room in itself is nothing. It’s a badly lit room with lots of – you know – scruffy pictures on the wall. It’s also a shrine for people to visit. They’re not interested in the Boys Club which is kind of an anachronism really in some ways. We need to invest in our society a little bit more to kind of create different kinds of values. And of course again, I believe that that’s where the arts come in that they do inculcate values which are actually worth having.

Narrator: And of course we couldn’t leave out the Fab Four. John photographed a lesser known Beatles site in Liverpool, the Casbah [Coffee Club].

John Kippin: The Casbah is one of those places I just felt, you know my heart sank when I saw it. It’s kind of run down, it’s a bit scruffy, its unremarkable, but you know, the Beatles used the Casbah. I mean they were central to the development of this idea of a venue in some you know kind of slightly out of the way Liverpool suburb. Something was happening here and something which is so remarkable really. And yet, the building is unremarkable. Yes, it had to be there. It had to be there to think about why it was there really. And I think sometimes the banality of something can be quite powerful in its way. If you understand the story, it transcends you know its physicality.

Narrator: Michael Lacey and Bryan Biggs are cultural archivists at the Blue Coat, the oldest art centre in the country.

Michael Lacey: It’s quite an easy city to exist in as a bit of an oddball or as somebody who makes unusual things. There’s a lot of people in Liverpool who I don’t think would function as well elsewhere.

Bryan Biggs: It is a port city. And it’s got … it’s had like 300 years as a port, you know a serious port city connected to the world. That’s when it had those connections with the Americas. And that’s really what made Liverpool. America or the Americas, made Liverpool really. And there’s a dark history because of the slavery. The slave trade which merchants made money out of which was then put in to this building here. So, this building, the Blue Coat and other institutions were funded largely from profits of either slavery or trades that were connected like, sugar, cotton and tobacco. But at the same time there is that sort of sense of a new world out there just over the horizon.

Michael Lacey: As obvious as it is, I was obsessed with the Beatles when I was a kid. And I got so much out of being in the same city as them and feeling that kind of weird sense of identification and – you know – my road ends on Penny Lane. So, when I would walk to school I would pass the bank and the butchers and the barbers or whatever from that song. That all felt really kind of alive to me.

There’s a whole core of bohemia in Liverpool around Lark Lane that’s kind of stayed there for many, many years ‘cause they’ve got cheap rents and Keith’s Wine Bar there. And you know, quite a lot of the people who live around there, who are involved in kind of avant-garde music, for example have played in the Blue Coat in recent years alongside a group called the Immex Ensemble who are a really exciting thing happening in Liverpool at the moment. They’re kind of a small kind of eight piece orchestra of classically trained musicians who do every year, they’re kind of funded by the Arts Council to do a season of collaborations with more avant-garde or electronic musicians so they can kind of bring an orchestral sensibility and a bit of a kind of fuller sound to those collaborations. And one of the things I found really interesting about those gigs that I’ve made a real effort to always come and see at the Blue Coat ‘cause they’re always really, really good, is that a lot of the people they were collaborating with, I put on in gigs in Liverpool 15 years ago at the Magnet when they were doing very different things. So, Liverpool really is a place where people can seemingly dig in to their niche interests for a very long time.

Narrator: So, is John any closer to finding the elusive Spirit of the North?

John Kippin: It has a kind of … and I think this is very difficult and very slippery, but it does have an identity which is, I think, a real one. I’m always trying to pin it down. I don’t think you can say what it is. I couldn’t say what it was. But I think it’s something that only exists in relationship to what it isn’t. And we all know what it isn’t, it’s not the South and it’s not London.

So, it has that sort of potential to be something, you know which we could talk about. Nobody’s talking about the spirit of the South. I mean, why are they not? I don’t know why they’re not? It’s not something that people would say of the South. They don’t conceive of it. And I think because they perceive the North as in some way other, and it’s the otherness of the North. And Northerners in a sense accept that and understand that by virtue of the fact that they are not in the South and vice versa.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. In the next episode, we’re looking at the connection between coal, people and power.

If you would like to get involved in the conversation use the hashtag #SpiritofTheNorth. And if you enjoyed this episode please do give us a nice rating and review.

Once again, you can see John Kippin’s photographs this summer at Bessie Surtees house in Newcastle or on the Historic England website.

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England’s people and places we set photographer John Kippin a challenge to explore the Spirit of the North.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne. I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer and I’ve been photographing in and around the North of England for many years because that’s where I’m based.

Narrator: On his quest, John captured photographs of some of the North’s most historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Bessie Surtees house in Newcastle. In this podcast series we’re digging a little deeper into the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We’ll explore the North’s history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence and will question what the Spirit of the North really is. In this episode we’re looking at the connection between coal, people and power. John chose to take pictures at the Woodhorn Colliery, Orgreave and Jarrow Town Hall.

John Kippin: Well I think that coal is part of the North’s story, certainly in the North-East and Yorkshire it’s a sort of central underpinning to why the industrial revolution started and the Northumberland coalfield, very big one, 200 pits in Northumberland alone.

Narrator: At its peak, the great Northern Coalfield employed almost a quarter of a million men, producing over 56 million tons of coal every year, but after a steady decline, in the 1980’s the government’s mine closures had a profound effect on the region, prompting miners to strike and culminating in the confrontation with the police, in what became known as the Battle of Orgreave. In communities like Ashington in Northumberland, once dubbed the largest pit village in Europe, the inhabitants have been coming to terms with the changing nature of their society since the collieries closed during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Deborah Tate and John Robertson work at the museum at Woodhorn, on the site of the former Ashington Colliery.

Deborah Tate: There was a distinct routine to it, there was a pattern to life. All the men went to work at the same time so you’d be getting up, there would be a system, guys would go off with their bait bags on their shoulder. Bait, which is lunch in a tin, flat caps on, and off they would toddle. The green buses would come along, pick them up, take them away. It was clockwork, it was I suppose an ideal village in a way. I was the daughter of a coal miner and it turns out that I’m actually 4th generation to work here at Woodhorn. My grandfather, his brother and my great-grandfather were down as working at Woodhorn, but I’ve been told, but I can’t find the evidence that there was actually a sinker in the family for Woodhorn Colliery, which takes it back to 1894, so yes coal’s very much in the blood. Everything in the community was connected to the pit because the housing had been provided, or a lot of the housing was provided by the colliery. The miners themselves contributed money to buy the first swimming pool in Ashington. The brass band was Ashington Colliery brass band.

Everything about it was to do with the pit but Ashington at one time, was known as the largest pit village in the world. And pretty much every family had somebody who worked in the pit. Everybody was happy…

John Robertson: Yeah.

Deborah Tate: It was a different world because it was a community, everybody depended upon each other, everybody knew each other. Even if you lived at opposite ends of Ashington, the chances were that your husband, your brother…

John Robertson: Always knew somebody.

Deborah Tate: …would know somebody and they would you know, there was a bond and you had to depend on each other underground because it’s a life and death situation and there’s many stories about people being bitter enemies on the surface, but having to work next to each other underground because they needed each other. It was a very, very different place in our childhood.

John Robertson: As you say, the community.

Deborah Tate: Woodhorn is not about the heavy industry, it’s not about comparing one mining machine to another mining machine, it’s talking about people.

Narrator: So why did John Kippin choose to photograph Woodhorn?

John Kippin: Woodhorn is a very traditional looking pit and with its twin wheelhouses is you know, quite a sort of visual statement. I mean there are other ones in the area. Ellington was a good one in the same area, but Ellington’s no longer there. And there were others. Some years ago I photographed them as they were closing down, a lot of them. And you know, I always remember Woodhorn as being one that has a kind of special quality if you like in terms of certainly its winding gear and the way its situation in quite a rural environment. Seemed to be a good example, put it like that, of that particular industry and building. Within our lifetime we’ve seen from a total dependence on coal to really no dependence, in terms of actually extracting the stuff or very little anyway, so there’s some open-cast mining but we’re actually, within the last few years, we’ve imported coal to Tyneside from America, which is interesting, you know, for power stations in Yorkshire. It’s a tremendous turnaround really in our fortunes.

But the other thing is that in a sense coalmining is one of those industries that really when you look at what was involved, and it was basically an unsafe industry, dangerous industry, many, many people lost their lives or were injured and I think it blighted many lives and still is doing so with the lung diseases that were associated with it. But it’s also viewed very nostalgically, so it’s something which, and understandably communities were built around, and those communities have you know, their values and they’re created around what is available to them. In a sense Orgreave, that’s in the South Yorkshire coalfield is a point at which there is literally a fight for this idea of continuity of this extraction in industry so it’s a pivotal moment Orgreave, I think.

Narrator: The name of Orgreave is part of a long history of places associated with workers’ protest, including the Jarrow March in 1936, when striking ship builders marched to London to protest against closures in their industry. Jarrow Town Hall was John Kippin’s second photograph.

Ross Lloyd: I’m Ross Lloyd and I am the Assistant Facilities Officer for South Tyneside Council and I help run the corporate buildings, one of those being Jarrow Town Hall. Well it’s like red fired brick, the thought behind that is to make sure that all the soot from the chimneys didn’t stick to like the sandstone that we had at the time, so you might see sandstone buildings and they were the soot stuck to them so sort of like smooth surface so it doesn’t attract that sort of, at the time, red really probably stood out as well so it’s a prominent building in the area and if it’s red brick. And you just want it to be like sort of flagship your centrepiece don’t you? I think it was 8,000 jobs or something depended on the shipyards at the time. It was the only thing really that was employment for the local people so when that shut down a lot of poverty around the area happened. And it didn’t help with the recession after World War I in the ‘30’s and then it came, we had 1936, where they decided to protest march to London to tell the Members of Parliament down there about the poverty in Jarrow.

Unfortunately though, you know, the amount of time it took for them to get down there, I think it was about 200 men in all, by the time they were put on the train come back they were told that they wouldn’t be able to work so their benefits were cut.

Narrator: So why did John Kippin take a picture of Jarrow Town Hall?

John Kippin: I wanted to celebrate Northern women, people, and you know we did think about the suffragettes, effectively I felt that Jarrow would make a more interesting and slightly complex statement really around emancipation and sort of working class experience and the experience of work.

Narrator: But the North’s industry has sparked more than just protest. It continues to inspire artists, musicians and poets. Deborah and John from Woodhorn Museum.

Deborah Tate: Woodhorn Museum is a museum about the people in the mining community of South-East Northumberland, but it’s not just about the days gone by, we have a very vibrant exhibition and event programme. We have the music, we use the history to build and create new things. There’s youngsters involved in brass music projects and things, but do you know, I have to say that this is not new to South-East Northumberland. Because of the mining community, it’s always had a really, really strong arts community. We’ve had brass bands for donkey’s years, we’ve had choirs, we’ve had amateur thespian societies and music societies, art groups, so all we’re doing is continuing the tradition, but making it relevant for today’s audiences.

Narrator: Newcastle based artist Narbi Price is inspired by Ashington and especially by the Pitmen Painters, a collective of amateur painters who worked mostly in the Ashington mines and produced art in their spare time.

Narbi Price: It gets talked about that there was nothing there when the Ashington group started but it was this kind of cultural wasteland and it wasn’t, it had an operatic society, it had amazing jazz, not just the jazz bands you’d associate with collieries, but it had an actual jazz scene, it had Ewan MacColl play up there, you know. But it had arguably more going then than it does now. My name’s Narbi Price, I’m a painter and a PhD Researcher at Newcastle University. Mine is taken as a starting point in formal art education and using the Ashington group as a case study. So it started with a guy who is working for King’s College, as it was then, called Robert Lyon who was employed by the WEA, the Workers Education Association to teach some mine workers from Ashington about art appreciation. Several of them had never seen a painting before, they’d never been south of the River Tyne. He decided, very much on the fly I suspect, to have them learn about painting and art and the challenges of the artist by making paintings. When I first saw the paintings, looking at them as an artist, there were things that kind of jumped out at me.

A certain type of crackle or patterns, certain supports, certain techniques that really kind of jumped out to me as an artist. So we’ve got later paintings that show a kind of continuing and evolving investment in how they painted. You can see kind of how individual painters had progressed, but you also see how they documented an evolving industry. So most of the stuff is regularly seen to be part of the Ashington group collection is quite nostalgic, so you’re seeing men with axes and shovels, you’re seeing pit ponies. Some of the paintings that we’ve found are showing mechanisation, they’re showing open-cast mining. It’s really investigation how the Ashington group weren’t necessarily this backward looking thing, they were very much invested in contemporaneous documentation as well. You can kind of tell when something’s been eradicated. So just outside Woodhall Museum is what’s quite grandly titled now the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park. It’s where the slag heap was and the slag heap was the biggest in Europe, that one that was always on fire. When you walk it you can tell that it’s not natural.

There’s a lake there and the lake is too round and it’s the same if you go to the site where Ashington Colliery was. It’s one of those kind of a business park I guess, with the incongruous Japanese water feature pagoda thing in the middle of it and you walk these crescents that aren’t meant to be walked, you know, they’re meant to be driven. Just gives you this kind of oddness and this kind of, you get a sense that something has happened there. I think there’s a feeling of real absence in those places because again going back to this idea of the reason that they were built in the first place, the reason the whole fact that people are there isn’t there, it’s gone.

Narrator: Deborah and John at Woodhorn Museum again.

Deborah Tate: I think our community has over the years, this might sound a bit strange, but it’s bred people to work in a big industrial environment and the majority of the men who were involved in that were miners. Didn’t mean that they were ignorant, it meant that they lacked opportunity and I think probably they were hungry for knowledge but they were kind of bred to work in the mine and they didn’t know anything else so I think they probably ended up pretty much staying here because it was where they were comfortable, where they felt safe and where they felt they had a role. I would say that probably although the world has become their oyster and they could do anything and be anything they want, we’ve created a wonderful society, I think a lot of people in Ashington still don’t know quite where they fit because in days gone by, when you were at school you knew that there was a career in front of you. You would work in the mines or you would go away and you would be providing something that serviced the industry in some way and I still think that there’s a lack of direction and understanding that people can do anything they want.

John Robertson: You still get that cloth cap and whippet whenever you mention where you’re from. They still say that, don’t they? You know, and you’ve gone “Well I’ve never worn a cloth cap and I’ve never owned a whippet in my life.” So you just look at these pictures and you think that’s what it is. I think people still think we’re living in the Stone Age unfortunately. If you say that and they’ll say “Er, right, you’re one of them, you’re a Northerner. Oh you’re no good at nothing”. And I presume if you’re a young lad and you’re just learning and you’re going out and that’s the attitude you’re getting from day one, it’s gonna put you down a bit.

Deborah Tate: The older ones will never forget what it was like because the world has changed so much in certainly the last 40 years. But the younger generation just don’t have a clue, they’ve grown up in a totally different world. They don’t know what a piece of coal looks like. They have no idea what it’s like to have a whole community of men that are all heading in the same direction at the same time.

Narrator: Alex Mirnes is 25 and grew up in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. He agrees that his identity has little to do with the North’s heritage of heavy industry.

Alex Mirnes: My knowledge comes from films like watching Billy Elliott and things like that and my knowledge doesn’t date back too far but I can tell in a number of people, you meet a number of Northerners that a sort of us and them and yeah maybe sometimes they feel like they have been forgot about. I don’t have a connection to that. I don’t think many of my friends do other than respect the history.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. In the next episode, how the North’s geology and prehistory has left indelible traces on its present. If you would like to get involved in the conversation use the hashtag #spiritofthenorth and if you enjoyed this episode please do give us a nice rating and review. Once again you can see John Kippin’s photographs this summer at Bessie Surtees house in Newcastle or on the Historic England website.

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England's people and places, we set photographer, John Kippin, a challenge to explore the spirit of the North.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne. I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer and I've been photographing in and around the North of England for many years because that's where I'm based.

Narrator: On his quest, John captured photographs of some of the North's most historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Betty Surtees House in Newcastle. In this podcast series we're digging a little deeper into the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We'll explore the North's history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence and we'll question what the spirit of the North really is.

In this series we've talked a lot about the North's recent history and how it's shaped life here. But there are traces of ancient history everywhere, from the Lake District's stone circles to remains of Roman walls next to shipyards in Tyneside to the rivers running throughout the North for thousands of years. John chose to photograph the Castlerigg stone circle, Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge and Newcastle's Tyne Bridge.

John Kippin: A history there which goes back a very, very long way and, of course, you know, history evolves but there are traces all the time or murmurs of that history which reappear, I think, in the way that people use natural places, you know, high places, low places, wet places, rivers. That's the fascinating part of it.

Narrator: Ancient Cumbria was once so important that our modern geographical understanding of Britain bears absolutely no relation to how the map once looked. Archaeologist, Kenny Brophy, has a particular interest in how ancient monuments intrude into modern life, even if their original purpose can remain somewhat mysterious.

Kenny Brophy: There's a lot of really great prehistoric archaeology in the North of England. Curiously, it is very understudied. The prehistory of places like Cumbria and Northumberland have been relatively ignored and yet there's really spectacular monuments but over the last five years my focus has become thinking about the relevance of prehistoric stuff to people today.

One place that really speaks to me in my urban prehistorian guise is around Penrith, the Henges at Mayburgh and King Arthur's Round Table, which are... Mayburgh is an enormous monument. It's a huge henge with a... It's made of thousands, if not... hundreds of thousands of river pebbles. It's an astoundingly powerful auditorium essentially with this big bank around it and it's right next to the M6 so you can hear the traffic all the time when you're inside the henge.

And when you drive along the M6, you can see it very clearly and yet I'm sure most people don't know what it is and there's no appreciation that there's actually this incredible 4,000 or 5,000-year old enclosure right next to the motorway. But that juxtaposition for me is very powerful because it's... that monument is intruding into the modern world in a really interesting way and actually, if you think about how many people see that henge every day, tens of thousands of people drive past it. So, it's probably one of the most viewed prehistoric monuments in Britain.

Those kind of examples of where sights are visible, highly visible, in an urban landscape and near motorways and things and are sites that have got a really interesting modern history, those are things that actually are more useful, I think, to talk to people about and to celebrate rather than just to celebrate what happened in these places thousands of years ago. So, I think there's huge amounts of potential.

I think that the rivers are really significant because so many prehistoric monuments are located beside rivers and near rivers. And those are also the kind of places that urbanisation develops as well, especially in the harbours and ports and things like that. So, in South Shields where there's a wonderful Roman fort, Arbeia, with incredible reconstructions, the reason that fort is there is because it's on the river, it's on the port, you know, and therefore it offered connections to the empire in Europe.

But also the Roman fort was built on the location of an Iron Age settlement, which is a kind of a Roman authority, action really. But, again, you know, you've got this place that was by a river, by a harbour, accessible and therefore people used it for settlement in the Iron Age and then the Romans used it and then it's now a major settlement, you know, a major urban conurbation.

These things are deeply connected to the river because that's why these things are there, you know, for purely pragmatic reasons. So, I think that rivers play a big role in a lot of the sites I work with and a lot of the landscapes I work with, just because they are places where people do stuff next to, they're places where people live, they're places where people construct monuments and do things and that, again, is a thread that runs right through thousands of years of human prehistory and history.

And the thing about prehistory is that rivers would have been the major routeways through the landscape. Especially in the Neolithic period when the land was essentially covered in trees and woodland, people probably would have been moving along rivers and around the coast more readily than they were trying to cut through the land. So, rivers are fundamentally important places in prehistory and you find lots of stuff happening around them.

Narrator: So, why did John Kippin take photographs at the Castlerigg stone circle?

John Kippin: I think the thing about Britain, everything is much older than we think it is. However far we go back, there are always these amazing stories. You know? For example, Christianity in Northumberland, you know, from the 8th Century. Back further again, you realise that there were settlements across the North, small settlements.

Some of them are evident, such as places by places like Castlerigg stone circle, which is just an evidence of a really quite sophisticated sort of society, gathering, place, the idea of a place to be, a place to worship. We don't really know very much about it. These places are so old that, you know, we can only really guess in the same way that we're still guessing endlessly about Stonehenge, which is, of course, much better known.

I love the way that these places are places of pilgrimage now, so people still want to come to them. They still want to be somewhere special. And, you know, they're very much of the geology, of the geography, of the weather, of the place. So, the North, you know, is not just a place for industry to take place but way before any thought of making steel, people were, you know, using flint tools and colonising throughout Britain and that is very interesting, I think.

Narrator: What do we know about ancient cultures of the North of England? Here's Kenny again.

Kenny Brophy: There's a lot of work been done in looking at regional traditions in the British Neolithic and so, for instance, Yorkshire has got very distinctive traditions in the Neolithic period of types of burials, of types of grave goods found in burials which are very rich and there's obviously something interesting around there. Places like Cumbria have got very distinctive stone circles and unusual monuments which are not really that similar to anywhere else. There's really dense concentrations of prehistoric rock art across the North of England as well which don't... which include, you know, weird symbols you don't necessarily find anywhere else.

And there's been a lot of work done in the last couple of decades about trying to connect Cumbria to a broader Irish Sea zone, as it's been known for some reason, in Neolithic archaeology. So, like it's got connections to Northern Ireland and to Anglesey and Isle of Man and the southwest of Scotland. And so casting Cumbria in particular as being like not really part of England but being part of this kind of other zone which is kind of focussed on people travelling across the Irish Sea...

And part of the power of that is related to the Langdale polystone axe source, which is in the Lake District. There's essentially a source of material to make polystone axes in the Langdale Mountains. You can find bits of those axes all over Britain and it's a really prominent type of material to make an axe that people were quarrying from the top of the mountains.

There's actually bits of Cumbria in the Neolithic period are found all over Britain and so there's really broad connections. So, these people, even though in the North they were doing things distinctively in terms of some weird monuments and some different things happening, they were really well connected and actually there were bits of Cumbria that were actually magical and powerful to the extent that they were found all over the place. So, there's an element of introspection and an element of really being a central place as well.

And so the way that the map of Britain works now and the way that the transport network works now doesn't really apply to the Neolithic because in many ways Cumbria was a central place, whether it be because of its connections to the Irish Sea or whether it's been through the axe trade, however you want to phrase that. So, there was local people doing local stuff but they also were well-connected elsewhere.

Narrator: Bridges feature heavily in John's photographs. Both Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge and Newcastle's Tyne Bridge are in some ways a reminder of a much more distant and forgotten past.

John Kippin: So, coal and steel an important part of it. Transporting things becomes an important part of it. The constructions that comes out of it. I mean, the North has the most marvellous visible constructions, I think. I think of the Transporter Bridge as a fantastic piece of engineering. Beautiful, elegant, fun to ride, I would have to say, and I love the way it manages to be a beautiful construction, slightly eccentric in the solution that it has for ferrying people across the river but it's beautiful and it's like a dinosaur striding across the river. So, it has that relationship with deep history in some ways.

And the need is there. It's almost become... I don't know, its economic function isn't what it used to be but it's a thing of great beauty and purpose and it does do that. Teeside is a very important place. It continues to be important in terms of all sorts of things. It recently lost its steel industry, has a big chemical thing going there. But, you know, how can you...? You cannot go to Middlesbrough and not see that bridge. You know, it's in your consciousness all the time.

The Tyne Bridge is more personal, I think, because I think I always feel that when I come from the south over the Tyne bridge, somehow there's a special place there. That's the place that I know the best, I suppose, and, you know, it feels like it's kind of home and it just feels like to me, and this sounds in contradiction to probably everything else I've said but it kind of gives me an idea of really where the North beings. [Laughter]. And, of course, it's a lovely structure, it's a beautiful structured, very distinguished looking bridge. I think none of the other cities have a bridge to match the Tyne bridge. It just so happens that the engineering strength of Teeside is reflected in that particular bridge. And the kind of elegance of Newcastle, I think, is reflected in the Tyne Bridge.

Narrator: And what is the legacy of this prehistoric culture? Rachel Bower is a poet based in Sheffield.

Rachel Bower: Something I'm really interested about Sheffield is the history in terms of the... I guess the kind of goddess history, so the spiritual history in terms of not necessarily the... I guess like pre-Roman, that kind of history that's been written out. There's some like great history about the peaks and about Mam Tor, which is like grandmother... you know, the grandmother hill and I think that there's... the land is very, very rich with stories and I guess it's quite right for a feminist... kind of a feminist writing of the city, knowing those kind of goddess... like goddess mythology is there.

So, I think if I was to think about the spirit of Sheffield, I would be thinking about the people but I'd also be thinking about the landscape and the stories that the land tell and, you know, the names of the rivers, they're named after goddesses and I find that really interesting and I write about that as well.

Narrator: Marina Nenadic is from Yorkshire and for her the ancient landscape of the North is one of its defining features.

Marina Nenadic: I have so many really good memories of driving through the countryside to get to different places in the North and that was always something that I really enjoyed because my parents would always point out really interesting bits of the landscape. I think one of my favourite parts of the Northern landscape is the Hole of Horcum. Yeah, it's a huge valley.

I think it was cut into the land by a glacier but there's a lot of myths that surround that space and people go walking there and it's covered in heather, so it looks beautiful and quite otherworldly. I think the myth is that a giant scooped out the hole. Something to do with a local giant created this hole and it's still there. And it does look dramatic on the landscape. It looks like a real dent.

Kenny Brophy: There's a lot of debate in archaeology about folklore and about its role in the discipline, especially in terms of prehistory. There are some people who think that folklore is like a window into the deep past and that you're... these are older memories and traditions that are retained through time. There are other archaeologists who think that's rubbish and don't have any track with it at all, you know, because folklore is often associated with, you know, there's a kind of Victorian fanciful element to it.

There's a local folklore associated with some of these sites which are lost... are unknown to archaeologists unless you actually bother to go and speak to local people. And once you start to speak to people, you find out, oh, yeah, that's what... you know, or, yeah, that... there's an association with a family member with this prehistoric site or did you know someone used to do this or... and that you get these amazing stories.

And so what interests me, really, is the modern biographies of prehistoric monuments. There's a folklore element to that as well as an anecdotal element as well. There's always stories which, even if they don't relate to the deepest time or the life of a prehistoric monument, they tell you something about the biography of that place and they're important and should be given status by archaeologists when looking at prehistoric sites which, again, shifts the focus away from what happened in a place 5,000 years ago to maybe what happened 500 years ago or a hundred years ago or ten years ago, which is really what I'm interested in.

So, I think that rather than say it's folklore, it's more like kind of the biography of a place or the mythology of a place which we... and the stories associated with monuments and sites that are actually really worth uncovering for archaeologists and help to bring these places alive for communities.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. In the next episode, John Kippin reflects on whether it's possible for an artist to truly capture the spirit of the North. If you would like to get involved in the conversation, use the hashtag spiritofthenorth and if you enjoyed this episode, please do give us a nice rating and a review. Once again, you can see John Kippin's photographs this summer at Betty Surtees House in Newcastle or on the Historic England website.

Narrator: Welcome to Spirit of the North, a podcast series from Historic England. To celebrate the North of England's people and places, we set photographer, John Kippin, a challenge to explore the spirit of the North.

John Kippin: My name is John Kippin and I live and work in Newcastle upon Tyne. I consider myself to be an artist and a photographer and I've been photographing in and around the North of England for many years because that's where I'm based.

Narrator: On his quest, John captured photographs of some of the North's most historically and architecturally significant places which you can see on historicengland.org.uk and on exhibition at Betty Surtees House in Newcastle. In this podcast series we're digging a little deeper into the places John photographed and the stories they tell. We'll explore the North's history of creativity, innovation and cultural influence and we'll question what the spirit of the North really is.

In this final episode we're spending time with John himself to hear about his work, his process and his motivations behind the project. We joined him on one of this shoots at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. He was waiting for the sun to set and the crucible's lights to come on so he could get the perfect shot.

John Kippin: I think what we're looking for is obviously an interesting pictures of the Theatre itself but also the way that people kind of interact with the space. So, the way that they use the space, like, for example, these people here. Now, whether or not they just walk across it is of some interest but, you know, would be not as interesting perhaps as if we could see a little bit more detail. And of course, you know, like these people here will have a different kind of message to these two guys here, you know.

I mostly work with exhibition type projects. I'm working on two, actually four, exhibitions for this year, including this one, one in China and two in the North of England. So, when the opportunity came about that I could put a piece of work together for Historic England, of course that seemed very interesting to me, and appropriate for what I do. I'm quite familiar with most of the places on a fairly wide scale and have an interest in heritage matters and places.

Narrator: I think they're going to come on soon.

John Kippin: Do you think so?

Narrator: Yeah.

John Kippin: You would think they would.

Narrator: Everyone else has got their lights on.

John Kippin: The North is such a big place and it has so many great things of interest and, you know, of course by making a selection, one is saying, well... You're inevitably saying, well, this is more interesting than that but that is not actually the case. I mean, it's one of those impossible jobs, really, because anywhere is so complex that there are a thousand ways to do something. In a sense whatever you choose you're excluding something else.

And that's a real problem but, you know, it's a problem that we all have in a sense. We all have the particular narratives that we need to make and some of them may be personal and that's fine. I mean, that's... In a sense the good thing about being able to work as an artist, because you can work a personal narrative.

Part of the thing with a large format camera is the precision that you get. If you can have a look here, you can see that, you know, the geometry of it is very particular. I have worked this way for many years, really, but I work with a film plate camera. So, it's a five by four sheet camera, which means that the film is held in what I call dark slides and they're shot one at a time, basically, in a camera which is glued to a tripod, effectively, and frequently that tripod is from a slightly elevated position, so it involves quite a big piece of apparatus and a ladder to stand next to it, not on every occasion but on many occasions in order to get a little bit of height and have something of an overview of the situation.

That's useful for two reasons, some of which people might say, well, okay, that's a bit obsolete now, you know, we're all... everybody's using digital photography and I do have a digital camera as a kind of a supplementary camera that I'm working with for hand-held pictures, maybe contextualising shots, to test things out, etc., etc.

So, it's not that I'm anti-digital in any way but I started to use the 54 because I like the precision of it. The precision that it brings to any picture is around the geometry. There is a particular relationship between having been there and recording that act on a piece of film and having been there and recording that acts as a digital image which is then, you know, seen as something which is then used as a basis for making an image from.

Usually, when I'm making my work I then transfer... So, I get the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds, depending on your viewpoint. I transfer my film image to digital and then I make digital prints because I like the qualities and the options that printing... using print-making materials gives because I'm trying to make pieces of art, effectively.

This is what I meant about saying you're never quite sure what you're gonna get, even when you've made the picture. There's always that element of, I suppose, you know, serendipity. From the Theatre towards the camera will be great. Okay, ready, steady, go. Hang on, hang on. That's it. Go back a bit and then just walk in a line towards me. Ready, steady, go. That's great. That's so nice of you. Thank you so much.

Narrator: So, how did John go about trying to express the spirit of the North through photography?

John Kippin: I wanted to make a coherent exhibition that at least coheres around an idea of the North. We can start off by asking all sorts of questions, you know, about what that means, if a place can have a spirit or not or if that's something that is best left to people or whether, indeed, you know, the idea of the North itself is in some way contentious. It's a different thing to different people and I've always been aware, living in Newcastle that Sheffield, you know, to most people there seems pretty far south, so... And, of course, if you're Scottish, anything in England is southern anyway, so it's one of those curious things.

But what I wanted to do was to kind of, if you like, put together a montage of places and I wanted those places to say something about the nature of the North as I see it and even though I've lived there for getting on for 40 years, I don't really see it any more as a place of nostalgia, although those things are there, they're important and they need to be recognised, they don't need to dominate. So, we need new stories and... So, the nature of the past in a sense does set the tone for the future. So, I wanted to recognise that.

I wanted to see the North as a place of great diversity in terms of what it's done over the years and the contribution it's made to the idea of civilised Britain, really. And of course the more you look and the deeper you look, the more there is, which is, I think, a kind of marvellous thing in a way and I hope that pulling focus in this way will open some of that up.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the final episode of Spirit of the North, a podcast from Historic England. We've been exploring the spirit of the North through John Kippin's photographs on the subject of the North's history, industries, art and music. You can see John's photographs at historicengland.org.uk and at Betty Surtees House in Newcastle. Get involved in the conversation with the hashtag spiritofthenorth and thank you for listening.