My first post and its a New Year Supprise

We unearthed a picture in the post Christmas tidy up and thought you might like it

Making Ploughshares At The Britannia Ironworks, Bedford

Hello everyone, Cameron's Dad here, I've had this genuine print for some years now, it was purchased appropriately from a gallery in Bedford Town, not that far from the iron works. The print is dated 1874 and I would say represents the very peak of horse plough production at the works. The scene is a very industrious one and is illustrative of prodigious output necessary to supply the Empires ploughing needs. These production sheds survived in the most part right up until the early 1980,s when they were demolished, a gated housing development now occupies the site, with just the wonderful gatehouse arch surviving. It is an interesting exercise to overlay modern Health and Safety requirement upon this scene, especially when one considers that the earliest of the child labour laws were only just being introduced at this time. Social authors such as Charles Dickens made frequent references to such working conditions and were part of a growing movement to improve such working conditions