OK it’s a visual cliche, but it’s a scene that will soon vanish. Beehive Mills, a grade 2 listed twin mill in Bolton will soon be demolished for more housing, so I thought it prudent to go and have a look while I still could. The first mill was built in 1895 with the second…
Category: Black and White
#476 – Telamon (Temple Hall) Shipwreck, Lanzarote 3
Last look at the Telamon, with a few in monochrome. I’d taken my ND filters to try some long exposures, as the weather forecast was for cloud. However it was a trifle windy and by the time I got there, the clouds had cleared but the wind hadn’t dropped, which didn’t make for ideal conditions…
#470 – Best of 2016 part 3
So a (belated) third part to my 2016 retrospective continues with a quick look at Mutual Mills in Heywood – not an explore, more a drive by as I was in the area. I’ve a few more from the Manchester area that I’ve not yet got round to posting up – I’ll put these up some…
#468 – Best of 2016 part 1
So, it’s a few years since I did this, but as 2016 has been a productive year photographically, I think it’s time for a retrospective. I guess it’s down to the fact that over the past few years I’ve been busy with my career and family has meant that taking photographs has not been a…
#465 – Shadows of the North Second Edition now on sale!!
I am pleased to announce that having sold out the first run of Shadows of The North, I have produced an expanded second edition, with many new photographs from 2016 including Brierfield Mill, Hope Mill, Ancoats and several others. I’ve also had a shuffle round of the existing images. The book is now 94 pages…
#457 – Scunthorpe steelworks revisited
While the photographs I present on my websites etc are often heavily processed, they are all ‘straight’ pictures. Recently though, I have been experimenting with textures to see if the addition of these to an image can bring something else to it. For this experiment, I selected my images of the steelworks at Scunthorpe, a…
#456 – Mutual Mills
In 1965, Mutual Mills had more than 1,000 people on the payroll and, as well as its textiles operation, had its own Adelaide Engineering division on site (who are still active on site as a sub-contract machining operation). In the 1970s and early 1980s, Heywood’s textile mills were closing down at a rapid rate, blaming…
#462 – Book Review – The Rouge by Michael Kenna
I’ve had a long fascination with the steel industry. Where this stems from I don’t know, possibly from my time at technical college learning metallurgy from a former British Steel metallurgist, and getting my head round such terms as Jominy End Quench, and other such stuff. The attraction of the photography of Michael Kenna is…
#455 – Vernon Carus Revisited
I visited Vernon Carus’ old Penwortham Mills site back in 2007, not long after the site had closed and work transferred to a new factory round the corner from my house in Chorley. At the time, there was a full time security guard on site who kindly let me wander round for a couple of…
#454 – Shadows of the North website
Although I already have two (paid for) websites and two (free) blogs, I’ve decided to build another one, which is a website using a free WordPress blog as its platform. It was mainly to see how quickly it would take to put a website together for a group I’m a member of (answer – surprisingly…
#453 – Colne Mills
North Valley Road through Colne used to be lined with several sister mills to the Smith & Nephew Brierfield Mills, but all have been demolished and replaced with shiny new supermarkets and car dealerships which gives a veneer of modernity to impress people passing through. But away from this facade is another typical East Lancashire…
#452 – Rossendale Mills – The Lancashire Sock Company
Not too long ago, there were many little mills, bleachers and dyers in the valleys of northern England. The past 20 years has seen them disappear or redeveloped into apartments, as property prices increase and gentrified semi-rural living has become more popular. The valleys of Rossendale though are strangely untouched in this regard, with many…
