I trained as a mechanical engineer, and I still love the fact that you can see what’s happening with mechanical devices. Of course some pieces of mechanical machinery are incredibly complicated, but motions, cams and flywheels are infinitely more interesting, visually at least, than the PLC’s used on modern machinery. I had to laugh when a metal spinner, a dark…
Category: Black and White
#309 – Brook Dyeing
This place is long gone now, but was fairly typical of a semi-rural bleachworks that were common across Lancashire and Yorkshire until recently. Located next to a stream in Meltham, Royd Edge Mills was last home to Brook Dyeing who shut some time before 2007 when I went. It was pretty unremarkable apart from the…
#308 – Chatterley Whitfield
This is a photograph that I missed from my post a while back on Chatterley Whitfield Colliery. The image here shows just how much infrastructure is left at the colliery, and the monumental job of upkeep that, well, hasn’t been taking place. When something like this is busy producing coal and making money, then…
#304 – Gate
Oakenclough Paper mill was a large rural mill in he middle of nowhere that closed quite suddenly in the 1960’s. It is in a strangely isolated spot onthe edge of the moorland above Lancaster, and is still occupied by a number of busineses so there was no exploring to be done unfortunately. I was impressed…
#303 – Ivy Bank – Shadows of Change
I love these long shadows! Like something out of scooby doo where the haunted house becomes alive and the windows become eyes. Backlighting (centre jour) can do interesting things, and this was taken on an April morning, when the sun was still low in the sky.
#302 – Loom Of Doom
In the corner of the top floor of Bailey Mill, sat this, one of the last looms produced by the Dobcross loom company in nearby Diggle. The loom industry used to be huge, with the likes of British Northrop in Blackburn employing 3000 people at their massive site in Blackburn. But with the rapid decline of…
#301 – Closing forever
Multipart, Pilling Lane, Chorley, May 2007 As part of the once-vast British Leyland empire, the huge Pilling Lane site in Chorley was a distribution centre for Multipart, BL’s spares arm. In the early 80’s large amounts of money were spent on the site making it into a state of the art facility according to contemporary…
#300 – Old Lane Mill Again
I just can’t get the sky right on this. Well, when I say ‘right’ I mean, that I’m struggling to get a look that appears in fitting with the rest of the image. It was dull overcast day, and although I’ve been able to recover some sky detail from the raw file, I can’t seem…
#299 – The Hotseat
Take a seat! Brook Dyeing 2007. It’s gone now, and there wasn’t much to see in the first place, other then the remains of the water wheel pit, but I recently stumbled across this photo I’d forgotten about.
#293 – Re-visiting photos 2
More reworked photos! These are from Edenwood Mill, which if still standing, must be a pile of soggy wood and rubble as it was in a right state back in 2008. This one hasn’t really benefitted much from the monochrome conversion compared to some, but the lens corrections have slightly improved things. The next…
Mechanical Landscapes 