It’s easy to see industrial sites through rose tinted glasses when walking round old, derelict sites or museums, but I’ve spent my career in factories and I know that even today, industry can be hot, hard, sometimes dangerous work. This old foundry is a great example of that – podging rods such as this were used to tap the hot liquid metal in the furnace which came running down the trough into moulds. Another podging rod would be used to insert a clay bung into the furnace to stop the metal flowing. A wrong move would result in molten metal splashing everywhere, including onto you. Ouch.