Grids. Not that kind.

  We live in the country's grid capital.
   Look in the gutter. No, not at the tramp asleep there, or the litter. Look for the grids. Read what's written on them. I guarantee that pretty soon you'll see this...

   John Needham & Sons had two foundries in the town, making street ironwork like grids and manhole covers. And you'll see them everywhere in the country. I keep an eye out wherever I go and I don't know of another firm withg such coverage. Someone told me you can even see them in Hong Kong. Their main rivals round here were..

   J & S Eyres of Miles Platting. I met a woman once whose dad worked for them - real old-fashioned industrialists apparently, throwbacks to the 18th century.
   There's loads of variety once you start looking. Different areas have their own suppliers. It shows you how much industry we once had.

This is one of my favourites - Eagle Foundry, Salford, 1877, on Bramhall Park Rd.. The old ones are particularly beautiful as the iron weathers into this marbled texture. And they link you to a past filled with smoke and noise, the industrial revolution in full swing, when we made the modern world possible.

   It pains me to see them getting nicked, and pains me even more to hear the coppers whingeing about not being able to find the culprits. Here's a clue, coppers. They'll be pulling grids up, and paying frequent visits to scrapyards. Not rocket science, is it?