End of an era

Who better to document the final few days of steelmaking in Port Talbot than Jon Pountney, the man who's been busy creating a photographic record of how heavy industry has shaped the Welsh landscape?

This BBC article gives only a small taster of a series that looks set to follow in the lineage of Mik Critchlow's images of Woodhorn Colliery and, closer to home, the recently publicised pictures taken by Huw Powell as production ceased at the East Moors Steelworks in 1978.

Venturing into the belly of the beast has evidently been quite an experience for Pountney: "I didn't know what to expect, and you're basically met with a very large dark room where there is a river of molten metal running through the middle. You've never seen anything like it - it's this incredible, almost volcanic elemental thing, which is quite terrifying."

Also allowed access was photographer and filmmaker Mark Griffiths, who underlined what the closure will mean for the town: "The ripple effect is going to be phenomenal. It's not just the steel workers that are impacted, it's the surrounding infrastructure, it's the local businesses, it's the communities that are going to be ripped apart and devastated by this."

For those of us who regularly pass Port Talbot on the M4, a smokeless skyline is going to seem very strange. How long will the chimney stacks survive?