Ind Archaeol Rev 23 (2)

Argues that industrial archaeology often focuses on artefacts, ignoring the wider environment which gave rise to them. With corn milling in nineteenth-century Portsmouth as a case study, structuration theory is employed to bring together the various influences acting upon millers, so placing industrial archaeology within its broader context. The first section is concerned with top-down political, social, economic and physical influences; the second with the reaction by millers to market opportunities, available capital, insurance, the selection of production technology, diversification and family control. The reaction of dockyard men who established their own mill is also considered.

This paper discusses the development in Britain and Ireland of all-metal water towers. Concentrates on towers that provided public water supplies, but also outlines parallel developments, especially in railway engineering, during the nineteenth century. After 1900, panel tanks formed of steel flanged plates generally supplanted earlier forms of tank construction found on water towers and it was not until the 1950s that other, more pleasing, styles came to be erected, although these found little favour in the water industry and few were ever built. The aesthetic and long-term maintenance problems associated with all-metal water towers are also considered.