When I visited shepherd wheel the conditions were very much the same as to our predictions only with a few slight miss-judgements, The air inside the building was damp and humidity levels were high, this made it hard to breathe and the poor ventilation didn’t help, this made the dust flow through the air until it finally settled on the floor. The only form of ventilation was the four holes in the wall located up high in the wall, and also the windows offered some ventilation as well, they did have on mechanism to remove dust which was called a ‘Fanny’ this was the only method they had of removing dust from the air besides the holes and windows, this still wasn’t enough to remove the dust from the air.
The building itself was made out of stone painted white with a stone slate roof, this provided no insulation for the workers what so ever, it was colder in the building than it was out doors, the atmosphere was musty and consisted of a mixture of dust and damp which lingered through out, the dust collected on the wooden floor and made it slippery and covered the whole floor and all of the objects on it.
I also noticed the lack of space and crowded and cramped conditions, the workstations were within 1 meter away from each other this is excluding tool space so the space would be even more cramped when in working order, the lack of space occasionally lead to injuries there were also more factors which could have caused injuries these dangers varied from ‘Exploding wheels’ to grinders asthma. Exploding wheels were caused by cracks in the grinding stones which then made even worse by weathering they finally gave way and broke whilst spinning at high speeds, they flew all over the building in some instances injuring and even killing one person. Another danger where known in this era to be called ‘Red hot mates’ these were little pieces of metal which flew off the metal which was been ground these were at 100+ degrees and some times flew into eyes of the workers where then blindness would occur straight away. Both of these we could not witness for ourselves for obvious reasons today’s safety regulations don’t allow this to be shown.
Other disturbances for people in and around the mill would defiantly include the noise level both from the machinery and people, the machine mechanisms the drive shaft and the wheels is bound to make some noise and the huge wheel outside of the building will too, human noise will consist of coughing and spluttering and the noise of men shouting their plans and maybe warning people of anything lying about.
The Grinders worked long hours which varied on how much work they had to do from 9am to 9pm or they could go even later! Some of the workers would stay into the early hours of the morning to get their work finished. I know this from the grinder’s booklet that I have received in class to help me with this assignment I have also been told orally of this by my teacher in school. Overall the information I retrieved from the booklet was relatively accurate baring in mind that we could not see some things for our selves like the wheels in working order and we couldn’t have a first hand experience of the red hot mates and the whole workshop in full working order but the things we could see they made a very clear and accurate judgement of.
