Slaggy Island

The Blizzard

"South Bank lies three miles east of Middlesbrough. Locally they call it Slaggy Island in honour of the ring of spoil heaps that once cut it off from the outside world. It’s not as glamorous as that nickname makes it sound. South Bank was the home of the Smith’s Dock shipyard, of Bolckow Vaughan and Dorman Long steelworks, clusters of iron foundries, warrens of brickyards. Blast furnaces, smelters, rolling mills and fabrication sheds converted ore to pig iron, iron to steel. They shaped it, cut it and shipped it out. Through most of the 20th century Slaggy Islanders lived their lives under a cloud of bitter smog. You had to catch a bus to see the sun."

In episode Seventy One we revisit "Slaggy Island" by Harry Pearson, first published in Issue Nineteen in December 2015. In it he waxes lyrical on the neighbourhood of South Bank in Middlesbrough, which has produced no fewer than 100 professional players from its working class ranks.

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