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 –…
Category: Black and White
#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…
#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.
#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…
#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…
#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…
#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…
#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…
#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…
#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…
Mechanical Landscapes 