Walking on history...

It is all going on under our feet but how often do we take a look at the pavement?

What is going on under our feet? Ironworks that’s what. Look at this beauty - the holes are to let air in and other gases out.

Inspection drain, utility, coal, manhole – iron covers of every shape and size, round, square, oblong, triangular, some with raised iron patterns, others with numbers, gas, water, telephone, you name it and it’s there.

I came across these within the space of half an hour in Pwllheli this weekend (just click to see the wonderful detail). The Ductile Iron 600 Saracen (top left) is my favourite – what a fantastic shape. I wonder what an ‘Air Valve’ does (centre). I’d like to know where ‘The Britannia Iron Works, Portmadog’ stood, it isn’t there any longer (top right), and the bottom three are small, round, coal hole covers. You can find them embedded in huge slabs of Welsh slate outside the old terraced houses in the centre of town. Pwllheli was once a thriving port so the coal that filled the coal cellars beneath these covers would have been brought to the town by sailing ship. Who’d have guessed there was so much history under our feet.

Covers to sewers had been made from stone or wood for thousands of years and it was not until the industrial revolution and the development of Victorian sewer systems that manhole covers became common. It was at some point during the 19th Century that manhole covers started being made of iron and the oldest available foundry catalogue for manhole covers dates back to 1860. The word manhole was used in the past to describe particular areas on the decks of sailing ships. The manhole provided access to goods and stores in the hold and measured approximately a metre long by a metre wide.

The French are big on manhole covers. The manhole covers for the Paris sewers are wonderfully ornate, many are art noveau. It’s hardly surprising that such trouble was taken with the covers when you consider what is beneath them, after all the tunnels below were built to look more like cathedral cloisters than sewers.

But it’s the Japanese who are the real manhole cover fanatics, they’ve taken them to a whole new level, their manhole covers are each individual works of art.

That’s the Japanese for you; they take an idea and obsess it until it becomes a cult or a national movement – just look at the Manga craze or Bonsai trees. Japanese manhole covers are beautiful and often one-offs commemorating a particular event or person.

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A lot of Japanese manhole covers are made from plastic or resin, but given the stunning quality of the covers, I think that I can forgive them.

Anyway, it's all there beneath our feet – history, beauty, industry, information, art. Take a stroll along any high street and count the number of iron covers you see. I think that you’ll be surprised by how many, the variety, and what they tell you about what lies beneath the pavement that you are walking on.

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