Mechanical Landscapes

Category: Black and White

  • Rome Street Gas Holder, Carlisle 1

    From what I can tell, there are less than 5 gas holders left in the north of England, which is incredible really as most towns used to have at least one, with bigger towns and cities having several dotted around the place.This is listed and has therefore survived the purge of the remaining ones that…

  • #680 – Hatfield Colliery 5

    #680 – Hatfield Colliery 5

    Compare the close in typology shot with the wider view showing the messiness of the site to demonstrate the art of composition and choosing what to include and exclude in the image. Two different photos of the same scene from a (more or less) similar position. Both photos are interesting in their own right, but…

  • #679 – Hatfield Colliery 4

    #679 – Hatfield Colliery 4

    I first posted my photographs of Hatfield Colliery a few years back here, here and here. But I took quite a lot on the day and I sometimes dip back into them to process one that I didn’t bother with first time around. This is one of them and while it’s maybe not of the…

  • #677 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 2

    #677 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 2

    This is the typology photograph I ended up with. It’s realistically only viewable side on from this side and although I could have wandered on site to get a slightly better view I’m not sure it would have been vastly superior and I like the inclusion of the greenery at the bottom. It’s a simple…

  • #676 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 1

    #676 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 1

    This place had been on my list of places to photograph for my typology for a while but it’s a long drive and I’d relegated it to do ‘later’. But we booked our 2023 summer holiday in Anglesey so there was no excuse not to pay a visit! I’d visited the island previously in 2010…

  • #675 – Chatterley Whitfield 2

    #675 – Chatterley Whitfield 2

    I took a number of photographs of this view, trying to find the composition that was ‘just right’. And that is both the benefit and curse of digital photography, each exposure costs £0 so you can click away, unlike with film where very exposure costs you anything from several pence to several pounds depending on…

  • #674 – Chatterley Whitfield 1

    #674 – Chatterley Whitfield 1

    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…

  • #673 – Foxfield Colliery Revisit 2

    #673 – Foxfield Colliery Revisit 2

    So while my primary reason for visiting was to get photographs for my typology, I did want to see a bit more of the site. Most of the original site is now a more modern industrial estate and yards, but as well as the two headgears and sidings, the railway also own a few smaller…

  • #672 – Foxfield Colliery Revisit 1

    #672 – Foxfield Colliery Revisit 1

    I first went to the Foxfield Railway in December 2011 for a photo charter involving a crane tank engine at the Foxfield Colliery. The colliery was a rare survivor – it had shut in the 1960’s but for reason that are unclear the site wasn’t levelled and the headgears (and some of the surface) buildings…

  • #671 – Astley Green revisited 3

    #671 – Astley Green revisited 3

    A (belated) last photograph from Astley Green, maybe slightly influenced by the street photographer Saul Leiter. OK, very influenced – my influences are many and diverse, although there’s no evidence of Leiter ever taking a photograph of a coal mine! This was very much a chance photograph – I’d finished looking round and had retired…

  • #670 – Astley Green revisited 2

    #670 – Astley Green revisited 2

    June 2024 saw a lot of changeable weather, and the day i visited alternated between sunshine and blue skies and dark clouds and rain. I’d taken a few photos of the headgear with an old railway crane in the foreground, as I liked the way the lattice structure on the boom complimented the lattice structure…

  • #669 – Astley Green revisited 1

    #669 – Astley Green revisited 1

    Astley Green Colliery – a geographical ambiguity. Saying it’s in Wigan will trigger the locals into fits of raging denial. While it doesn’t actually sit in the town of Wigan, it sits within the borough of Wigan, specifically Astley Green which comes under Tyldesley. The site is leased from Wigan Council, and if you’re travelling…

  • #666 – Scottish typology images

    #666 – Scottish typology images

    Two different headgears, five minutes apart. Barony is much easier to photograph, its sheer size make it relatively easy to photograph, although to get far enough away means you have to shoot from the south and wander into some undergrowth. But it stands in splendid isolation apart from various boards explaining the history and what…

  • #659 – Price and Kensington Bottle kiln

    #659 – Price and Kensington Bottle kiln

    Stoke is somewhere I only ever drive through on the A50 while trying to get somewhere else. Other than a couple of visits to Chatterley Whitfield Colliery on the outskirts, I’ve never had cause to stop and explore. But as I was heading down to the East Midlands and had some time to spare, I…

  • #658 – Ratcliffe Power Station 2

    #658 – Ratcliffe Power Station 2

    It’s possible to see the cooling towers from the south and the west, so I had a quick look round to get a few different perspectives. There are eight in total, neatly arranged in two rows of four. I found that the most interesting composition was the one above, with the sun over my shoulder…

  • #657 – Ratcliffe Power Station 1

    #657 – Ratcliffe Power Station 1

    Ratcliffe Power Station was one of many built in Britain in the 1960s and 1970’s but it’s claim to fame was that when it closed at the end of September 2024 it was the last coal burning station in the country. Positioned to take advantage of the abundance of coal that was mined by the…

  • #656 – Brierfield Gas Holder 2

    #656 – Brierfield Gas Holder 2

    I’ve not got much by way of history, but there again it’s a gasholder – they aren’t the most storied of things. What I’ve found online is that it was built by the Tunstill’s (owners of Brierfield Mills which is just a stone’s throw away) and taken over by the Nelson Local Board in 1888…

  • #655 – Brierfield Gas Holder 1

    #655 – Brierfield Gas Holder 1

    I last went here in 2015 when I was accompanying my friend Katriina around a few places in Lancashire and we had a quick look here. It was around this time that the National Grid were accelerating their removal of gas holders and I regret not photographing more. I had it in my head that…

  • #653 – Clipstone Colliery Revisit Part 1

    #653 – Clipstone Colliery Revisit Part 1

    I’d last visited Clipstone Colliery in March 2009, not long after the site had been cleared, leaving just the magnificent grade 2 listed headstocks and power house standing alone in a recently graded field. In fact there were still piles of rubble round the back and the fence had not been erected around the buildings.…

  • #652 – Clipstone Colliery 2009

    #652 – Clipstone Colliery 2009

    These are some photographs that I’ve never published on this blog, although if you follow me on social media you will have seen them, and the colour versions appear on theviewfromthenorth.org. I visited here in 2009, and the site had just been cleared of all the surface buildings. All that was left was the grade…

  • #651 – Pleasley Colliery Revisit

    #651 – Pleasley Colliery Revisit

    I first visited both Clipstone and Pleasley Colliery on the same day in March 2009 and while Clipstone was my priority this time I thought I’d pay a quick visit to Pleasley as it was only 25 minutes away. Back in 2009 I was years away from starting my headgear typology but while I had…