Category: Black and White
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#627 – Talbot Mill, Manchester 1
As of the time of writing (November 2023), there are very few mills and warehouses around city centre Manchester that haven’t been renovated or pulled down. Medlock Mill is I think the only one left within the ring road (Chatham Mill potentially but seems to have had some internal refurbishment), but just beyond it is…
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#626 – DOT Motorcycles factory, Manchester 2
A few reflections as I seem to be in that groove of late. I’m in two minds about how to present these reflections. The natural way i.e. as photographed is fine, but when you see it inverted it makes more sense as you can see what it is. But then you are tempted to read…
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#625 – DOT Motorcycles factory, Manchester 1
The old DOT Motorcycles factory stands on Ellesmere Street, just off the Mancunian Way. I must have driven past this place countless times and never noticed it which is slightly embarrassing given my ability to spot old mills and industrial buildings from hundreds of metres away, often at great speed. It was once the home…
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#624 – Mather Lane Mill No.3 (Brooklands Mill) Leigh
On the south side of the Bridgewater Canal is the other remaining mill of the Mather Lane complex, Mill No.3 which is also known as Brooklands Mill. Unlike No.2 mill, this is still in industrial / commercial use but split into multiple units as is normally the case with old mills. The adjacent mill (No.1…
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#623 – Mather Lane Mill No.1, Leigh
Just up the Bridgewater canal from Butts Mill are Mather Lane Mills, a small complex of mills that straddled both sides of the canal. Wikipedia tells me that it was built in 1882 and the Bolton architects of Bradshaw, Gass and Hope were responsible for the design, as they were of many Lancashire mills. In…
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#622 – Butts Mill, Leigh 3
My last photo of the front of the mill was taken from further away than the ones in my last post, but made a feature of the corner markings. I’ve processed all the photos the same way, making the grass really dark and ‘muddy’, and bringing out the whites of the field markings. It was…
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#621 – Butts Mill, Leigh 2
Butts Mill sits opposite Dootsons Park Playing Fields, and a game of youth football had just finished when I got there. This was a shame as it would have been nice to have got some players in the frame when I photographed the mill, but I think an empty pitch works equally well. I decided…
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#620 – Butts Mill, Leigh 1
I stumbled across this place a few years ago when I was driving past and didn’t have a camera with me, and it’s taken me a long time to go back to take a closer look. It’s an impressive place and, well the Historic England listing describes it better than I ever could: “Cotton spinning…
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#619 – Higher Walton Mill 2
I wanted to take some alternative views of the mill but struggled to find a perspective I liked as not only is the mill set back from the road, it’s at an angle to it as well as below the road level. The perimeter fence did catch my eye though. It’s not something I’d normally…
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#618 – Higher Walton Mill 1
Like many Lancashire towns, Preston once had dozens of cotton mills, but very few have survived. There are of course a couple of significant exceptions, with the refurbished Hesketh Mill on New Hall Lane being something of a landmark as you approach the city centre, and the gigantic Tulketh Mill – complete with chimney –…
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#617 – Lees Brook Mill 3 – notes on composition and creativity
It’s a few months since I posted about this place, and my attention has been elsewhere this year, so I’d forgotten that I’d started to write this! As I mentioned in the initial post, the catalyst for this visit was seeing this post on Instagram, and although I’d seen the mill when driving in the…
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#616 – Interview feature in Black and White Photography Magazine Issue 277
I’m delighted to announce that I have been interviewed for issue 277 of Black and White Photography Magazine. This is on sale in newsagents in the UK until mid-May 2023.
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#615 – Lees Brook Mill 2 – Reflections and other perspectives
Legend has it that Oldham once had over 360 mills chimneys – ‘one for every day of the year’ which meant that it had at least as many mills. Indeed, Oldham was the centre of the world when it came to cotton production – in 1913, 10% of the world’s production came from Oldham and…
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#614 – Lees Brook Mill 1 – getting going again and a new camera
I didn’t do much by way of industrial photography in 2022. I’d organised a 3 day trip to south wales in March to photograph a number of places for my ongoing coal and steel projects but then caught Covid on the day I was travelling and had to cancel all my arrangements. After that, other…
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#613 – Manchester – A Strange Survivor From The Past
Much of Manchester’s industrial past is exactly that – in the past. For better or worse, there is less and less evidence that it was a major industrial city and the skyline is now one of shimmering glass towers. I did think that the only remaining chimney was at Bloom Street power station, itself now…
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#612 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 3
We get nostalgic – protective even – of landmarks. For me as an observer, this is an interesting piece of engineering and industry, but for many locals, it represented something, as did its removal from the landscape. I’ve been a member of a Teeside steelworks Facebook group for a few years and it’s open to…
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#611 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 2
A man with an enormous Leica and a chap who had retired as technical manager at the nearby Skinningrove steelworks were also photographing and we struck up a conversation as photographers often do. Both were local and far more informed than I, an outsider to the area and industry. We were joined by a photographer…
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#610 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 1
I’ve been intrigued by the blast furnace at Redcar for many years, and have made 5 trips to photograph it since 2009. Most of the British steel industry had gone by the time I started photographing industry in the mid-2000’s, and I didn’t grow up in an area that had any steelmaking (well, there was…
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#609 – Lancashire Rural Industry 3 – Bridge Clough Mill Chimneys
On a walk round Bacup, I noticed these chimneys in a valley, so I went for a closer look. I know of a few isolated chimney’s around the north west as they were often placed away from the mill on a hillside to increase the draught, but these were literally off the beaten track. There’s…
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#608 – Lancashire Rural Industry 2 – Hill Top Colliery
I’ve written before about Lancashire’s coalfield so my few regular readers will have to excuse the brief recap. While not as big or as long lasting as Yorkshire’s or Nottinghamshire’s, it was certainly one of the main mining areas earlier in the 20th century and extraction was concentrated around south Lancashire in a belt that…
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#607 – Lancashire Rural Industry 1 – Cheesden Lumb Mill
This mill had been on my list of places to look at for many years, but it’s one of those places that is not going to be demolished (although it could just fall down of it’s own volition, I suppose) so has never been a priority to visit. This is another one of those long…
Mechanical Landscapes 