Two Sides of a Coin?

Reading some of the literature produced in the 1930s by the dedicated members of the Sheffield Ramblers and putting it alongside George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, it's easy to come to the conclusion that the sombre moorland landscapes so beloved of those stalwarts was somehow linked in their minds with the stark industrial landscapes where they spent their working days.

Now, the city is a different place and so is Blacka. Few would want to return to the industrial past described by Orwell -

Once I halted in the street and counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them, but there would have been far more in the air had they not been obscured by smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of slag from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage Contractor'.

Neither would I want to see Blacka Moor, which is now a much softened and greener landscape than then, being returned to some museum of a sheep and grouse moor with only browns and greys to welcome us apart from a couple of weeks of purple in August.