Reflected contrast

On a rather grey, windy and cold day in Newcastle this is the art deco style of Fenwick’s department store (on the right) next to the ornate Emerson Chambers, now housing Waterstones bookshop – both reflected in the glass walls of the Eldon Square Shopping Centre. (I wonder whether the Boots frontage really had to be that garish!)
 
I could make a very tenuous link with what we were up to today in that this is Blackett Street and the Blacketts were a very important family in Newcastle. For 250 years they were involved in the Lead Industry in the North Pennines, becoming very prosperous and holding office as Mayors and MPs of Newcastle over several generations. Last week we went to a lecture about this family and today we went to one about the lead industry itself, from the geology of lead, through the mining, smelting and processing of the ore. Both excellent. We were particularly interested in this, as I discovered a while back that some of Gordon’s ancestors were lead miners and some were smelters, all in the area that the talk was about. We learnt a lot.