August 10th – My dislike of the Walsall Wood pithead sculpture is well known and somewhat controversial. I actually think that it’s not only aesthetically dreadful, but badly engineered and ill thought out. In the construction, there’s a random mix of stainless steel fasteners and normal ones, which stands out; looking at the frame there are multiple sets of holes that appear to have been redrilled, but this may be intentional. The sign commemorating the pit seems to face the wrong way, and cannot be read from the road, whilst the construction is topped by a pennant bearing the initials NCB, for the National Coal Board. The NCB never actually operated the pit, but oversaw it’s closure, which shows a particular ignorance of history.



