The area which the Black Path forges through has been in the news a lot of late, with talk of dilapidation, demolition and redevelopment.

One of the main points is the iconic but dormant tower of the South Bank Coke Ovens. The Dorman Long tower as it’s known is a brutalist icon.

Disused since the late 1970’s this prominent feature of the landscape was a bunker, used to store coal to be turned into Coke. Coke is produced by heating coal in large airless coke oven batteries to remove hazardous composites; the resulting coke is a tough, but absorbent carbon that is used for reducing the iron in a blast furnace. By-products of the process are coke oven gas, tars, and oils. Which in this case was transported from the ovens to nearby locations for processing.

Many people have walked this path, going to and from work.

I wonder how many stopped to pick some berry’s on the way home…

The pipes which lead you along this landscape form a maze, some joining, some ending abruptly, there must be miles and miles of pipework here.

I have a certain small amount of sympathy for those that want all of this gone, that want to move on. I can’t ever put myself in that camp. Something needs to remain of our industrial heritage to remind us of those who made Teesside what it was…

The Black Path and it’s environs are a feast for the senses.