My thanks to friend Mick Gorton^ for opening my eyes to manhole cover art, (now there's a sentence I never thought I’d write). Anyway, I decided to incorporate a bit of “drainspotting”, as I believe it has become known, into my cycle ride this morning.
I came across this little beauty, cough, near Fulwell golf course in Twickenham.
OK. It hardly set my heart racing. The emphasis is clearly on function rather than art. I realise it’s straying from local history, but later in this post, with help from technology, (cycling wasn’t really an option), I spread my net more widely over London, and the world, in the hope of finding something a little more inspiring.
First a quick look at manhole covers. Basic design goes back to 3500 BC, manhole covers beginning life as slabs of stone or pieces of wood giving access to covered trenches below that were carrying sewage. We had to wait until the 19th Century when “modern” manholes and manhole covers were developed, since when, apart from materials and installation techniques, little has changed.
They mark the mouths of tunnels, pipes and shafts that run underground in our cities and towns. The majority are plain and uncomplicated cast iron discs, however, some are evidently worth crossing land and sea to take a proper look at.
Before venturing further afield, I’d like to do the manufacturer of the manhole cover in the photograph above the service of understanding a bit more about what they do.
Established in 1975, Durey Castings Limited are specialists in all types of manhole covers, gully gratings and duct covers in cast iron, ductile iron and steel. Other products include street furniture such as tree grids, bollards and tree guards, shimpac ironwork raising planks, kerb drainage, linear drainage, channel drainage, composite chambers and box furniture including step irons, cable bearers, cable brackets, anchor irons and bolts. Also flip valves, stop top boxes and service boxes including fire hydrants, gas, traffic control, street lighting and meter uses. And manhole sealing grease, releasing grease, lifting equipment, (including BS and non-BS manhole keys), gully hook keys, BT type lifting keys and powerful hydraulic lifters. Oh. And small tools. Who knew?!
Products are used in all areas of the construction industry, including major housing projects, major roads, motorways, tunnels, bridges, docks, airports, petrol stations, schools, hospitals and shopping centres.
The company has been associated with major projects, including the Transport for London network; Trafalgar Square Refurbishment; London Underground Refit; the Channel Tunnel; the new Wembley and Arsenal FC Emirates Stadiums; Bluewater and Lakeside shopping centres; and Belmarsh, Chelmsford, Rochester and other prisons.
Right. Time for some insight into what drives the aforementioned “drainspotters” to travel the world in search of manhole covers deemed worthy of being photographed, becoming sometimes the subjects of brass rubbings. Examples from London, Europe, America and Japan follow:
London:
Shadwell
Camden
Westminster Abbey. This brass rubbing of a manhole cover by T. Crapper was made in the abbey, where two of these covers are still in use today.
France:
Paris, 3 Square de l’Opéra-Louis Jouvet
Slovakia:
Bratislava, and “Culmil the sewage worker”
The bronze statue appears to emerge from a manhole in the city
Spain:
Toledo, in the Jewish quarter of the city
Germany:
Berlin
Designed in 2005, depicting some of the city’s landmarks, including the TV Tower and the Brandenburg Gate
America:
Seattle, Washington
Artists were commissioned by the city to design more than a hundred manhole covers for the downtown area
Japan:
Beginning in the 1980s, Japan installed a countrywide modern underground sewer. As PR for the project, each local municipality decorated the manhole covers, a practice that has continued to this day.
They are serious about this stuff, and credit to them. They are also rather good at it. I think and hope that for the majority of us art can, and does, lift the soul, and for me the application of it on such an unlikely subject makes it all the more fun, and arguably more powerful. You’ll probably not be surprised to know that Tokyo hosts a Japanese Manhole Festival for Japanese manhole nerds. Splendid.
Examples from Japan follow:
Ojiya
The Nishikigoi brocaded carp is the city’s official fish. They were first bred here, but now come in about a hundred varieties, with enthusiasts around the world. Wonder what we’d have in London for an official fish.
^One evening, on one of my visits to Stafford where I once lived, Mick and I met up for a drink. Things took an unexpected twist when he showed me some photographs he’d taken of some very artistic and attractive ironwork that just happened to be in the form of manhole covers - actual “working” manhole covers. What a great idea – here, and on travels abroad. To find attractive art and design in such an object is, I think, something to be celebrated. Apologies again that I didn’t do better with this morning's effort from Fulwell.
Oh, and I don’t recommend looking out for manhole covers while actually cycling.
Red arrow: The location of an extremely dull manhole cover. This is the important stuff, eh?
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