The Man Engine

I vaguely remember seeing something on the news, last year, or the year before, about the 'Man Engine', an 11m tall puppet, created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of  the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, and thinking it looked interesting.

Then last autumn I saw a local news item, saying that the Engine would be visiting this part of the world in April. 

Earlybird tickets were cheap, and it looked interesting, so I booked... and it was!

The puppet was very impressive, and interesting - as you can see,  it is made from elements of heavy plant machinery, which is appropriate, as it is named after the original man engine, which was a way of using stem engines and mining machinery to allow men to be carried up and down from mines, as an alternative to having to climb all the way on ladders.

It takes about 10 or 12 people to operate it, with ropes and levers, as well as someone in the cab of the JCB on which it is based. At the end of the performance it slowly folds down to its resting position.

The Man Engine resting!

According to the publicity material, it is the largest mechanical puppet ever made in the UK (they are quite specific abut that, so I'm guessing that perhaps the French 'Sultan's Elephant' was bigger)

Back when I booked my tickets, I wasn't sure whether I'd be free in the afternoon, as the tickets were only £5, so I also booked for the evening show, and I decided to go back. 

As well as the puppet itself, the show includes songs and readings  the main readings are from the diary of a Cornish tin miner William Crago, who started work at the age of 9, in 1869.

There were  also local references. Radstock was chosen as a site for the Engine to visit, due to its own mining history (coal was mined here until the 1970s), and reference was made to the Norton Hill Disaster of 1908, in which 10 miners were killed in a colliery explosion, with the names of some of them being read out, as part of the 

The evening show was the same as in the afternoon, but of course the pyrotechnics were more dramatic after dark! 

It was very dramatic, and I'm glad I went. 

The show is currently touring, to places across England and Wales with mining heritage. Full details are on their website - https://www.themanengine.org.uk.