The crumbling Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is somewhere I’ve visited a couple of times on the annual Heritage Open Days and it’s a site I enjoy wandering round. They also open on some Saturdays so I decided to coincide a visit with a trip to the Foxfield Colliery. Unfortunately an email was sent out a few days before stating that there was a safety risk – something to do with the chimney being in a dangerous condition – and we couldn’t go round the site. Never mind, I’d already arranged to go to Foxfield so called in to Chatterley Whitfield on the way back. I didn’t intend going on site as my primary aim was to get a photograph of the Hesketh Pit for my typology. You’ll see that in my next post.

The best way to get unobstructed views of the Hesketh is from the large patch of wasteland at the side of the site, which is outside the fence. This can probably be accessed from the road going to the front gate but I wasn’t sure so opted to walk down the public footpath from Bemersley Road to the east of the site.

This large piece of land gives excellent, unobstructed views of the Hesketh so really it’s just a case of choosing the best angle and distance to position yourself.

As an alternative perspective, I opted to get close to the palisade fence and focus on that so as to throw the headgear out of focus, thus reinforcing the idea of ‘keep out’.