Cambridge Museum of Technology contributeS online POEM-video and walking tourS to 2023 festival programme
At the 2023 Open Cambridge Festival (Friday 8 – Sunday 17 September 2023), the Museum will be exploring our industrial heritage around this year’s theme Unwrapping Creativity, presented in association with Heritage Open Days.
online video back in steam: sounds & senses
Presented as part of the Festival’s online programme under the theme "‘Unwrapping Creativity’, this free, on-demand poem-video (online only) will premiere on the Museum’s social-media channels from the start of the Festival (Friday 8 September 2023).
Poem: Back in Steam: Sounds & Senses – Exploring our industrial heritage
Written and performed by Dr Sarah Baylis, commissioned for the Museum, inspired by Steam Days under Creative Commons Licence: Attribution–Non-Commercial
A small church almost –
Top-lit.
Dust motes held in sunlight, in vapour,
Patterning the floor.
These decorated walls.
Glazed in green and yellow-ochre, blue, and hospital white.
Tiles glistening – clean and smooth and cold.
A wooden floor. Warmed by steam and sun.
Saturated with oil and dust.
With a century’s worth, and more, of sounds and smells.
Absorbed.
These doors, these round-arched windows, are the same.
The same as when they downed tools. That day in 1968 –
When they stopped the pumps
Left the engines cooling. Let the fires die –
And shut the doors.
‘A silence never heard since 1894,’ he said (who remembered it clearly)
‘The old engines had breathed their last.
The pumping station was dead.’
The same doors.
Flung open again to welcome a draught.
And a crowd
Waiting –
To witness the old engines
back in steam.
Here the past is still the present.
You can see it, hear it, smell it,
Taste it.
Still alive.
Breathe deep.
Their names are North and South.
Twin monsters cast in iron. Steel rods. Copper pipes.
Pumping engines.
Sole survivors of their kind.
Did they arrive by river, rail or road?
Who saw them coming? Piece by piece
Vivid and strange – like a fair.
Immaculate
They are –
Bright and shining red.
Cylinders clad in wood. Sturdy as a boat deck.
Brass trims clean and glossy as a horse harness
And something like animals
They are –
Living beings
Groomed for working and for show.
Female. Always
They are –
Capricious characters.
Cursed, cajoled and cosseted by turns.
Responding best to patience, and respect.
To love.
At night-time. Alone together.
The Driver. The naked bulb.
Shadows moving across the tiled walls.
Standing, watching, and listening to the steady heartbeat.
Listen hard.
Here are the voices – past and present mingled – echoing off the walls.
Resonating down the years.
Men shouting to be heard –
The Stokers
Who worked here once.
Lived here – in small and sooty houses –
A family almost. Bound by steam and smoke and sweat ...
‘Vile,’ he said (who remembered it clearly)
‘Like Hell on earth.’
The old destructors fed the steam with the town’s own rubbish.
Swept and scavenged. Shovelled into gaping furnaces
Always wanting more.
The waste of it.
The smell. The rotting reek of it.
The heat of it. The never-ending burning of it.
‘Prodigious, unremitting labour’ he said, who remembered it clearly.
This hellish work consumed men’s lives
(Who bargained daily with the Devil)
Devoured them.
Listen here –
To the engine breathing
To the crank wheel rocking back and forth, not turning
To the to and fro of the pistons
To the pump rods thumping
To the strokes –
The buffering pause ...
To the Engine strokes
Steady
And calm
Until they’re not ...
Hear the engine gasping, wheezing, banging, thudding.
Steam spitting, hissing, blowing –
The frenzy
Til she finds the rhythm of her breath.
Savour them here – these almost forgotten smells
Before they disappear for good.
Dark, greasy smells that live on the tongue and throat.
Low, humid smells.
Wet wood, coal soot, and sour steam.
Hot oil. Acrid tallow.
Coke and clinker – sulphurous
Choking.
Filthy ash.
Decay.
And always – deep in the well below – the sewage pumping.
Pumping.
Pumping.
The relentless tide. Rising and falling.
The sweet and sour stench of it
lingering
on skin, and hair and clothes –
Yes,
Breathe deep.
And remember them all.
‘Energy walks’: guided urban-WALKING tours
Throughout the Festival Museum volunteer Dr Gordon Davies will host free, guided tours of the urban archaeology of the former Cambridge University & Town Gas-Light company gasworks around Cheddars Lane, Newmarket Road, River Lane and Riverside.
Unwrap Cambridge’s energy history, discover the social and environmental impact of Cambridge’s first Industrial Revolution: the arrival of energy utilities.
Encounter stories of gasworks workers through local archives, visit remnants of industrial archaeology in the community, evaluate the impact on the landscape of Cambridge: past, present and future.
For more information about tour dates, times, route and booking information, visit our What’s On section.
MUSEUM ENTRY
Please note that entry to the Museum is not included within Open Cambridge activities; for opening hours and prices, check the Visit section of the Museum website.