Heritage et AL

When James K. Baxter was dismissed from his job at the Chelsea Sugar Refinery, it's well known that he wrote a rather 'unrefined' poem to express his disgruntlement: "I had the job of hosing down The hoick and sludge and grit For the sweet grains of sugar dust That had been lost in it. For all the sugar in the land Goes through that dismal dump And all the drains run through the works Into a filthy sump". Despite this unsugared description, a copy of 'The Ballad of the Stonegut Sugarworks' is lodged in the Chelsea Sugar Archives (at Birkenhead Library), sandwiched between a 1962 plan of the 'Disposition of Buildings' and a 1976 letter from the Refinery Manger to the Managing Director about managing absenteeism. A positioning which is at once random, and oddly relevant - though I couldn’t locate that impressive sounding ‘sump’ on the plan (see below).  Ref: 1962 Plan CSR-B94127, Chelsea Sugar Archives As to the letter, it reads as...

Photo credit: Melvin Vaniman c1902, Chelsea Archives It's big, it's orange , it's preposterous. You see it out of the corner of your eye as you drive up the Harbour Bridge, unless you're concentrating on the road of course.. It's the Chelsea Sugar Refinery in Birkenhead.