My Town: Industrial Architecture

 

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The river that flows through my town is lined with many old industrial buildings; most of them nowadays converted to serve other purposes. On Saturday (when out walking without any special goal in mind) I passed one such complex that I've probably walked past at least a thousand times before, and it suddenly it occurred to me to walk in among the buildings to explore a bit more. 

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 Nowadays these buildings house a lot of different businesses, but as it was Saturday, the whole place was pretty much empty - which left me free to take as many photos as I liked, without anyone wondering why...

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▲ Fire escape staircases and their shadows such as these always fascinate me. ▼

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 I also love how much work was put into the architecture of factory buildings in the past... Lots of little details, like decorations around windows and doorways etc.

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▲ I found that I was able to walk all the way down to the river and look over to the path on the side where I usually walk. (There's another old industrial building there as well, which is also nowadays home to several minor businesses.)

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▲ Other (and uglier) old factories have been torn down and replaced by modern apartment buildings (condominiums).

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▲ Finding one's way in Borås can be quite tricky, and not least for pedestrians, as besides the river there is also a railway and motorway to take into account, none of which can be passed just anywhere. On this occasion, I had to return to the street I came from and walk through an underpass below the motorway, to get to the other side of that. 

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▲ On the other side of the river, there is nowadays a special underpass for pedestrians, where you walk on a wooden bridge just by the water. Walking under there (as I often do when walking into town and back), I'm often fascinated by the geometrical patterns formed by light, shadows, and reflections.  ▼

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▲ Looking back across the river to where I stood to take photos 9 and 10. ▼

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(Photos 12, 13 and 16 were taken earlier in March - a note mostly as reminder for myself.)

Cotton Mill Museum (Rydal)

 
This cotton mill at Rydal (Västergötland, Sweden) was built in 1853, along the river Viskan - the same river that also flows through the town of Borås (where I live). This is also where the first hydro-electric power station in Sweden was built; and this mill was the first building in Sweden to have indoor electric lighting. 

"Due to the well preserved remains of an old industrial community, this factory, along with several other buildings, have been declared historical monuments. They tell the story of how the Borås region became the textile epicenter of Sweden."

https://digitaltmuseum.se/021015654584/arbetarbostader-i-rydal

A whole community grew up around the cotton mill, with the workers all living in (wooden) apartment buildings along the road nearby. Whole families would work at the mill - also young children, back in the early days. Some people lived their whole life here, in a very closed community.

Inside the mill, the huge machine hall is also preserved pretty much as it was when production stopped. We were able to join a guided tour, with a guide telling us about the history of the place, and demonstrating how the various machines worked, and what they were for - following the process from raw material (imported cotton) to finished product (yarn). 

"The spinning machines in the old spinning hall... represent the production of a novelty yarn that became the main product of the company in the 1920's. It was used in the weaving of rugs, furniture fabrics and as knitting yarn. Production ceased in 2004 [but a few machines are still run for public displays]"

 

The guide only turned on one machine at a time, for a very short while - but that still gave an idea of what an infernal noise all of them going at once must have made together... All day long...!

 

 

An old manual spinning wheel on display, hanging from the roof.
(My paternal grandmother had one like it, but painted green, I never saw her use it but I think it had belonged to her mother, from when they lived on a farm, and had sheep, and spun their own wool.) 

Some old enamelled kitchen items - I remember similar ones in that combination of beige and green from my grandmother's kitchen as well. 

More from the Textile Museum

At the Textile Museum (link to a previous post) there is also a permanent exhibition of old machinery used in production of textiles. Borås is an old textile industry town, and there used to be lots of textile factories here. Nowadays much of the production takes place abroad even if we still have a lot of focus on both fashion design and mailorder here. 

I snapped some random photos of various machines on my recent visit, but I don't have any details about them, so just enjoy the photos (if you like).

 

 

This display I think is to remind us of the fact that nowadays most the production takes place in poorer countries - just so that we here in the "western world" shall be able to buy too much, too cheap...

And this is to illustrate what one might have expected to find in a teenager's wardrobe in 1950 vs 1980 and 2010. Personally I suspect that this development has continued, and that teenagers 2024 must be having difficulties fitting all their clothes and footwear into just one wardrobe... What do you think?!

For my own part, I have to confess that I fill all of the wardrobe space I have in my flat all by myself (plus some extra storage down in the basement)  - which makes me wonder sometimes how families living in similar size flats (or smaller) manage their situation...

Flax Processing

Walking into town on Saturday, I passed by an arts and crafts shop, where they were having a kind of exhibition outside, demonstrating the process of turning flax into textile fibres. 

 

I'm afraid I did not stick around long enough to pick up all the details, but here is a short YouTube video from the open-air museum Skansen in Stockholm, showing the process, and including the correct terminology.

 

I hope the link works; if not, you'll find it here:
https://youtu.be/2_ToT0dxX-g 

 

Linking to:

Old Cotton Mill

The cotton mill at Sjuntorp near Trollhättan was the second mechanical cotton spinning mill to be built in Sweden, back in 1831. Accoding to a Swedish Wiki article about it, the factory had its heyday in the 1940’s, when it employed about 1200 people. I’m not sure how many workers there were in my childhood back in the 1960’s; but I do know they were still employing new people then, as several of my classmates had parents working there, and some of them came moving here from other countries in Europe (mostly Finland).

I think it was in the 1970’s that the situation for the textile industriy deteriorated, and many textile mills all over the country had to close down (with production being moved abroad, where labour was/is cheaper).

Nowadays the factory premises here seem to be shared by a variety of businesses – and only one of them a small textile company.

In my childhood, across the road from the factory there was a grocery shop and a post office; and I think also a kiosk in the square in front of the factory entrance. Now there’s a pizza house and that seems to be It. (The car parked in front looks like it might have been cruising around the village ever since the Kiosk times, though.)

No pizza places back in the 1960’s – but at the end of the village where we lived back then, there were two more grocery shops (one co-op and one private), plus a butcher’s, a bakery, a watchmaker’s shop, a newspaper kiosk, a community centre with a cinema (Sunday matinés), and even a police station. (Nowadays there’s one grocery shop.)

Neat big old wooden house close to the factory.

Peaceful view looking the other way along the river.

Old fire-station (1930).

This quirky house half way up the hill was built around 1900 as Memorial to a deceased factory director (whose widow donated the money); and to serve as community centre for the factory workers back then, with dining hall, reading rooms etc. Nowadays it’s a B&B (but we did not stay there).

Back in my childhood, to me the factory was just a factory was just a factory (repetition intended!)… I never gave it much thought. Nowadays though, when I look at old industrial buildings like this from a century or more ago, I’m struck by how much pride and optimism is shown in the details of the architecture; with lots of purely decorative details in the brickwork, frames of door and windows, chimneys and towers etc. (Compare for example that flat pizza house building…)

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Outdoor Wednesday