What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

Rattlechain has a big brother! Barnett’s brickworks had other brickwork sites; one of them being in the Aldridge area known as “Barnett and Beddowes.”  To gauge what it may have looked like before Albright and Wilson, (along with their Ministry of Supply conspirators), started to dump toxic waste I had a little expedition. There’s nothing more satisfying than hunting for some old quarry, though this one is still extracting marl for brickmaking, unlike the shambles operation that transpired at Rattlechain into the 1960’s.

Of course it’s fenced off and there are the usual warning notices, but from certain angles with the help of a great big tall person, it is possible to see the large crater in the ground. Forget the nonsense that Rhodia have tried to peddle about the Rattlechain pit being only around 22 metres deep, this is more like the depth that Albright and Wilson took on in the 1940’s.

I’m not going to pretend to be a brilliant local historian- I just like looking at old papers and connecting jigsaw puzzles, as the only way that history could be accurately recorded from the period would be with a time machine. There’s not really much on the internet that I’ve been able to find about this site but if anyone knows any more about the origins and ownership of it then  I would be interested to hear from you. I don’t know if it was the original one armed bandit Samuel who owned the rattlechain pit that was responsible for this site, or one of his brothers, but obviously the Barnett name continued in brickmaking elsewhere.

Today it appears the process of marl extraction has moved on quite a bit. Of the two major operators in the area, Ibstock and Weinerberger, the latter still extracts marl from the old Barnett pit.

All I can say to people who live in this area is thank your lucky, lucky stars that  a dirty great polluting chemical company did not decide to build a factory in your area- else you may well be starring at a toxic waste lagoon by now. What the future holds for this pit when extraction finally finishes is down to the planners as usual. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself……

I’m always on the lookout for “suspicious activity” on the homefront at Rattlechain lagoon. I keep the Rhodia/Solvay lobby HQ number handy at all times should any German paratroopers or weasely stoats should turn up unannounced.

Last week however there were some Mafioso type shade wearing dudes cruising around by the canal. There were no gondalas in site, but Tipton has more miles of canal than Venice anyhow. The air felt Mediterranean, sticky and hot- perspiration poured from every orifice and when the mobiles came out it appeared to signal that something was about to go down.  It had to be the Solvay mob.

Welcome to the Solvay family

I was convinced that a hit was going down in the joint and the wrinkly stockings would come out , but enough about the geotextile membrane already. Was this a carefully planned recky about the next big job and who would be getting the offer to buy the site for a price that they couldn’t refuse?

Pictures were being taken, though the only one missing from this one were a couple of feisty broads and Luigi and his ice cream van. I was particularly worried about  Jack “the flash” Di gestive – a regular Luca Brasi if ever there was one, and for the stallion that was tethered on the Birmingham canal at Dudley Port- but where was big Al?

Still pondering what lies beneath rattlechain lagoon

The original “Godphosser”

Undeterred, I witnessed the scene as the guys hit the trail, but not wishing to sleep with the two-headed fishes in the lagoon anytime soon, withdrew to a safer position. But as the Sicilian shaded glasses came off, I realised that it was just a summer daydream and this was not Don Corleone and his consiglieres I was watching but a “Rhodia Ltd” Director and the consultants doing another round the mulberry bush site walkover and no doubt planning another batty scheme in the pipeline. Things keep going round in circles here- or should that be pronounced “soycals”?

LIFE

Most swans hatch their cygnets in May, though there are some early birds that appear at the end of April. One particular pair that were being watched by us had had their original attempt wrecked by thugs after making a nest in a particularly vulnerable spot. It was with some surprise that they attempted again which I have rarely seen or heard of before.

With some effort a fence was erected and the result was obtained this last week when 4 new faces appeared.

water result!

DEATH

Swans that have attempted to nest at rattlechain lagoon over the years have predictably ended in disaster, to what we now know to be poisoning by white phosphorus.

This swan’s mate had died at the lagoon and was then chased off by the Rhodia boat squad. No doubt at some point in the future if vegetation is allowed to return around the edge of the lake, another attempt by a different pair- perhaps even those  cygnets shown above will be made- but the test will be in the survival.

At the lagoon this week a dead lesser black backed gull appeared freshly dead on the causeway path- somehow I do not share the optimism of the phosphorus producing pygmalions about the newly sculpted success of the “remediation” of rattlechain lagoon.

Cause of death?

Flaming June already and the sun is out! Even the ducks are taking the plunge to get out of the heat.

Diving duck

Though traditionally a very quiet month for bird rarities, sheepwash turned up a little egret again last week on the wader scrape.

Unfortunately the weather also brings out the crowds and wretched 2.4 children and wet dog in the droves, making visiting such West Midlands  “wildlife havens” a fairly miserable experience. Sandwell Valley- now a poor man’s theme park come bike racing track and Chasewater – destructive water sports R us are two examples of how local authorities are now obsessed with pulling in human crowds. It takes a full day for the poor rangers just to clear up the litter left behind from a weekend- but the councillors and higher managers don’t really see that in “the vision” do they?

It is a strange thing however that with the former site a local dogging Mecca, that the powers that be have never decided to lock up the car parks at night to stop it. “It will just send the problem somewhere else” is the usual excuse for apathy- well  good it will send it away from a wildlife reserve. I prefer to see badgers than a load of perplexed singular blokes stepping out of the undergrowth “looking” for them. If I choose to examine a leaf on a tree I want to know that the slime underneath it has been made by a slug and not something else. Sometimes one has to wonder if the people making the decisions including the police are daytime apathetic observers or really nightime active participants. There’s plenty of room on the council house car parks at night after chucking out time!

Wildlife has always been the poor relation in the local authority leisure department budget- no money to be made there, now with even more of an excuse to do less in this so called recession that we have supposed to have been living in, and so the politician cares more about the Jeremy Kyle crew, so long as they get to their food bank on time and know how to apply for benefits- especially the many available for shagging like rats – that’s where the money goes. In fact how perverse that animals that live amongst us are treated in the same category but lower down the pecking order than libraries and crown green bowling.

But hang in there wildlife lovers, half way there and come mid September the hordes will go back to watching Jezza on ITV2+1 after going to the shops for vodka and fags in their pyjamas, and nature will have to buckle down again to recover in the shivering  grip of Winter.

With corrupt housing developers and their political well paid fixers building on every available patch of green left in the towns as a direct result of politically approved mass immigration without mandate,  this in a perverse way does indeed leave hazardous waste sites as “safe havens.” Some comfort.

Hoorah for Rattlechain lagoon! I might just get my pied pipe out.

Peace and quiet at last.

Roll up, Roll up, the circus has come to town! This circus is in the form of the national grid electric powerline wire replacement works taking place across a large swathe of the Blackcountry area, including the boundary of Rattlechain lagoon.

Footpath diversions have become a regular feature of life for those who live around the affected areas, especially canal towpaths in the area. Although “essential”  it is still irritating nonetheless. 🙄

Signs at John’s Lane indicate that activity is taking place on powerlines VT26  and VT27. For the number nerds VT26 is located at the foot of the canal towpath at the Rose Lane tunnel end.

One has to assume that when these lines were erected that the lagoon area was avoided altogether and instead bypassed it by crossing the Birmingham canal and railway line towards the direction of Great Bridge and Ocker Hill.

Unfortunately the direction they take and the creation of Sheepwash as a nature reserve site led to many fatal bird strikes across the span of this site. A long campaign by us to identify and prove the problem resulted in National grid erecting bird diverters which are brightly coloured steering wheel sized reflectors that can be seen by the birds when in flight. This has greatly reduced the number hitting the lines in the 10 years that they have been up.

There is an interesting dichotomy when looking back on the two campaigns that define the success of our group since the late 90’s when both the rattlechain site and the powerline incidents were occurring at the same time. Both National Grid and Albright and Wilson/Rhodia wanted “evidence” that they were responsible for causing a problem. Both eventually decided to carry out independent post mortems. But this is where the similarities end.

Whereas proving ground impact injuries associated with overhead collision strikes can be routinely found on gross post mortem, (typically broken ribs puncturing vital organs), the Rhodia rattlechain problem was altogether a different case. Proving chemical poisoning in wildlife is virtually impossible when the will is not there, unless it is the sexy species of birds of prey where all the stops appear to be pulled out for some reason.

Whereas National Grid went out of their way to and admit in writing that their apparatus was to blame for the swan deaths at Sheepwash, Rhodia were altogether less willing to accept anything at all about the white phosphorus in the lagoon sediment that was poisoning birds. And still this continues.

Whereas National Grid could not remove the problem, the powerlines, Rhodia could remove the problem but have chosen not to, the harmful sediment.

But whether it is chemicals in the water or powerlines in the air, the amount of suffering caused by putting them there have certainly been recorded by us over the years.

Some pictures of the powerline works in the area are below.

High wire act

VT26 from rattlechain lagoon

Figuring my way around an upgraded computer………back soon. So long as imagination can trump technology everything will be just fine.

We said so in punning jest, as to how a dirty British chemical company with a dire pollution record were allowed a licence to dump toxic poisonous waste into the environment.

He has been an excellent animal rights advocate and agent, but here is a young Sir Roger Moore’s image before he was famous used in one of those old stalker “chemicals for industry” adverts from 1953. Perhaps its Anthony Perkins creeping up behind him in the shower, or jaws or nik nak?

Would you like to take a dip in Rattlecahin lagoon Mr Wishart?

Raising an eyebrow, I just wonder if the “water treatment advisory service” that Albright and Wilson talk of here were the same stupid prats that were advising how to treat white phosphorus contaminated sediment and water at Rattlechain lagoon all those years ago?

Swans in the area love their oats, though they aren’t particularly keen on the quaker variety for some reason.

The area once comprising the Rattlechain brickworks area appears to reveal a hive of industrial activity, though little trace remains of the actual works themselves. Brickmaking may have ended with a whimper in the 1960’s though the canal basin which used to serve the site is more overgrown with trees now, though I suspect the pollution below this is filled with many old bricks that were thrown in when the works themselves were demolished.

 Stopboard grooves can be seen on the entrance to what remains of the basin. I have seen historic pictures of the site held by South Staffordshire council which reveals a fairly sizeable v shaped basin was still there in 1964.

a stopboard groove

 It must have taken some considerable skill to enter the basin with such a tight turn. This picture from 1948 just shows the bridge entry point below to the right.

Unfortunately many of the rounded blue bricks that capped the bridge have been stolen, a problem across the area. Though British Waterways used to replace them, it seems that much of the will has gone now.

Land where once was water

Around the brickworks area and within rattlechain lagoon itself there is a multitude of pottery and bottles, much of it buried below the surface of the North embankment, hence why bottle digging was a popular activity here.

But there is no record of any bottle factory in the area shown by the historic maps which can account for such a hefty haul.

“I’m a little teapot short and stout”

A bottle unearthed on the north embankment during the 2013 works

The bottle below was unearthed by Heyrman De Roeck contractors digging on the North West embankment. I do not know the origin or contents of what it may have contained, but the name “Gibsons” is written in the marbley glass.

Poison?

If anyone can elaborate on this firm or what this may have contained please drop us a line. What it may have been doing in the Rattlechain site is another matter entirely.

Also unearthed in 2013 was an old Albright and Wilson sign denying responsibility for any injury.

We now have a similar situation with “Rhodia UK Limited”. I wonder whether this sign will be buried and one day unearthed by the next users of the site?

A break of sorts from the goings on at the lagoon. This post is about my observations of the urban angler. Some anglers appreciate wildlife and respect it, but a sizeable number do not. I have witnessed one drunk who was upset that the RSPCA were spoiling his jobless days fishing when trying to catch a bird that was tangled with line. Many people involved with the rescue of wildlife might appreciate and recognise this sub species of human being unfortunately at large.

There is a saying about some people you despise that “the best part of them ran down their mothers leg when they were born” ; but in some of these people I have encountered in the past it would have been better if these tumours to society had been removed with a swift punch up the sows’ stomachs about 3 months in.

  It is strange that the biggest risk of trying to help wildlife does not come from these animals themselves but often through explicit threats of violence from those who cannot understand the concept of trying to help something that cannot help itself. Why grown men want to spend company with other men in tents for days on end is beyond me, but each to their own I suppose. For the anglers amongst you, perhaps consider that other waterway users judge you all on what this minority are doing, and perhaps consider trying to remove them from the bankside permanently. 

THE COMPLETE URBAN ANGLER

What lies beneath those womblike waters?-

The canal delivers the eery fascination,

for those reluctant little Oedipus lads

dragged along the cut by their eager dads

 cloned in their own perceived bulldog image,

bored at throwing bricks at passing ducks,

 their suck used up and litter chucked-

curiosity when invited  to play with a waggler,

 dad has “scientific” skill unlike mother-

 botched DIY, predicting dogs,  his others.

spotless

 Not alone in these perverted pleasures,

                            old men past their prime clutch dysfunctional reels,

           loners huddled together under an umbrella,

              cursing pisces, the law and those Polish fellas,

                                 next to them jobless youths for whom a Smirnoff is God,

     a couple of carp stashed in the tackle box

with hot copper wire to burn ad hoc,

 the air polluted with misogyny,

spouting about the world’s right and wrongs

from their rambling liquor laced tongues.

Jesus liked the company of fishermen,

 “can’t go out to sea, repair your nets” he said,

todays fair weather angler dodges the eye of the labour

decorating for Mr Patel his neighbour,

careful to hide the NF ink on his white washed fingers,

his hands a pallet of red groundbait and tobacco brown,

the thought of the pub tempers his frown,

 where free to make jokes about colour and race,

why shouldn’t he bite the hand that feeds

and clothes his children in fake burberry and tweeds?

But pity the plight of their virago wives,

angling widows left behind on the council estate,

sleeping alone with Izaak Walton’s book,

jealous of their blokes affair with fish and hook,

and in part amusement and part revenge

 they reach for their own device in the draw

 with a flashing battery powered core,

 a buzz and a sound when they get a bite

but still from this aimless loveless abyss

they murmur lonely-“what kind of life is this?”

 Bankside, little Johnny has caught his first big one,

unlike the failure of every exam he will ever sit at school,

father and son united in a phallic obsession,

they hold aloft their prized possession,

captured in a photograph with their catch of conflict,

bonded but still enemies in this “sport”

much like their eternal dispute of sorts

about ownership of one woman’s genitals.

This is the feed that drives the route,

a poison porcine passionate pursuit.

and they think they are predators