'Steam and smoke' - recording town's last foundry

Forty years ago, a group of photography students embarked on a project to document the workers and operations of a foundry in Dorset.

Poole Foundry was the last of the town's iron works and was due to be relocated amid growing concern about smoke and noise.

The students had been unaware the project would take on new significance when, months later, the factory closed entirely and the workers were laid off.

Their photographs can be seen in a free exhibition, curated by Poole Museum, marking 40 years since the foundry's closure.

There had been numerous foundries in Poole's Old Town during the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

By the 1980s they had all gone, with the exception of one next to St James' Church, which was increasingly regarded by locals as a dirty and noisy eyesore.

Geoff Drury, a tutor at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design - now Arts University Bournemouth - tasked seven photography students with documenting the operation and its 40 workers.

Poole Museum volunteers have interviewed the original photographers about their recollections as part of the exhibition.

"My memory is smoke - steam and smoke," said photographer and former student Steve Orino.

"Once a pour had happened [there was] a smell and the whole place was just swirling in smoke.

"The pour was quite quick but these things would sit on the floor and they would just bubble away.

"You had people walking around like ghosts, they just disappeared."

Throughout the project, the group produced nearly 100 images.

Mr Orino, who has since photographed celebrities including Usain Bolt and Michael Palin, said: "The pictures were coming out every week and we were printing them like crazy and they were doing so well and getting a lot of attention.

"We were showing them to the workers and they were really pleased with them.

"[Then] it started to get fairly political.

"There was a change, that we were not photographing them just working any more, we were photographing them finishing their work at the foundry."

Photographer Diana Grandi recalled she had "jumped right in" to the "amazing, beautiful project".

She said: "It had to do with a human connection, it had to do with history, it had to do with a sense of place and those three things really triggered my interest, hugely."

Just over a year on from the closure, the pictures were exhibited at Poole Arts Centre, now known as Lighthouse.

Now the photographs have been reunited and will be shown alongside artefacts from the foundry at the same venue, from Tuesday until 22 February.

The exhibition has been curated by Poole Museum, which is currently closed for a £10m revamp.

The museum, which is owned by BCP Council, is due to reopen in the summer.

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