Remains
Little is left of the works today. The Old Works were demolished as the area around Swan Village was developed into an industrial estate. The only surviving relics of the New Works are two gas holders and some brickwork on what remains of the original route of Swan Lane, the lane itself has fallen victim to industrial development. A third gas holder not shown on the map was installed at a later date, but has since been demolished. A picture is available below.
The only remains of the Swan Lane Basin and Great Bridge railway lines are the extra gaps under the bridge on Bilhay Lane where the lines converged with GWR's Birmingham to Wolverhampton line, which still exists today as Line 1 of the Midland Metro. Embankments around the site offer clues to the paths of the original railway. The construction of modern Swan Lane has obliterated any signs that a level crossing by the Old Loco Shed was ever there.
New buildings have been built on the site of the New Works in between the old gas holders, that operate as the Sandwell Station on the National Grid.
Read more about this topic: Swan Village Gas Works
Famous quotes containing the word remains:
“Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no mystery in a looking glass until someone looks into it. Then, though it remains the same glass, it presents a different face to each man who holds it in front of him. The same is true of a work of art. It has no proper existence as art until someone is reflected in it—and no two will ever be reflected in the same way. However much we all see in common in such a work, at the center we behold a fragment of our own soul, and the greater the art the greater the fragment.”
—Harold C. Goddard (1878–1950)
“When the soul is ruffled by the remains of one passion, it is more disposed to entertain a new one than when it is entirely cured and at rest from all.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)