Decommissioning the Twentieth Century

Decommissioning the Twentieth Century / ISBN 9781910010358 / 100-page paperback with flaps, 5.6 x 9.25 inches, illustrated throughout in black and white / published by Uniformbooks (UK)

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In the decades after 1945, Britain witnessed a dramatic period of technological innovation and expansion. The state transformed the countryside with grids of pylons, huge concrete edifices, and a new era of extraction, while both rural and urban societies and economies adapted to the new cultures of energy, communication and leisure.

As these infrastructures—and the lives that inhabited them—are variously abandoned, repurposed or demolished, this book visits four distinct locations to consider how the countryside became modern, what these sites mean now, and how we might remember them.

Ben Anderson—Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, Stoke-on-Trent

Matthew Kelly—Fawley Power Station, Southampton Water

Katrina Navickas—Blackstone Edge, above Rochdale

Ian Waites—West Burton Power Station, near Gainsborough