An old drinking buddy of mine in Bolton was enormously clever and was sponsored through his chemistry degree by British Steel, as it was still called in the mid-1990’s. After inevitably getting a first, he decided not to take a job with them as he “didn’t want to spend his life in a steel works…
Category: Black and White
#579 – Steeltown Panorama – Scunthorpe
After visiting Rotherham, I headed for Scunthorpe, as I’d booked to go on a train ride round the steelworks with the Appleby and Frodingham Railway Preservation Society. The society are based on the steelworks site and run brake van tours of the steelworks railway system, but more about that in upcoming posts. Before I went…
#578 – Steeltown Panorama – Rotherham
I’d seen similar photographs to this a few times over the past rather, mainly when Rotherham hit the headlines for the child grooming gangs operating in the town. Now I don’t want to get into that side of the story (and any comments posted about it will be deleted), but the photograph itself was an…
#577 – Florence Mine 2
Ironstone mining was once quite widespread in Cumbria and helped feed the blast furnaces of the iron and steelworks of the county. Both the mines and the steelworks have now all gone, but up until the late 1960’s there were significant steelworks at Barrow, Workington and Millom. These all gradually stopped steel production and closed,…
#576 – Florence Mine 1
Florence mine is just a few miles away from Haig Colliery, so as I was in the area (and West Cumbria is not somewhere I visit regularly) it struck me as being worth a look. Unlike the rest of the mines on my recent mining binge, Florence was an ironstone (haematite) mine rather than coal….
#575 – Haig Pit 2
Haig colliery sits on a cliff above the town and looks out to sea. While I couldn’t capture it relative to the town, I did manage to photograph this scene showing the coastline and the cliffs that fall steeply to the sea. This land between the cliff and colliery was previously home to the railway…
#573 – Haig Pit 1
Cumbria in the 21st century is a place we most associate with the Lake District. It’s rugged beauty brings millions of visitors every year, but as you head west through the county, you hit the little visited industrial coastline. There’s not that much there now except Sellafield and a few old industrial towns, but for…
#572 – Bersham Colliery 2
While I was killing time waiting for a clear or cloudy sky (see post 570), I tried a few different compositions. I quite liked this multi layered composition, which is totally different to the single layer type I’m using for the headgear project. This was taken, processed and uploaded t the blog from my iPhone…
#570 – Bersham Colliery 1
I’ll post a bit of history in the next post, but in this one I want to talk about the photographic aspects of this photograph. As this was going to be part of my ongoing colliery headgear project, I needed a featureless sky. Didn’t matter whether it was a clear blue sky or an overcast…
#568 – Barnsley Main Colliery 2
The siting of the headgear atop the shafthead building wasn’t unusual, although the backstays are supported by the winding house meaning that no part touches the ground. However, it’s certainly unique in the context of the other remaining headgear in the UK, and made all the more prominent by the demolition of the previous mining…
