One of my current long term projects is photographing the remaining mining headgear / headstocks in the UK, and displaying these in a ‘typlogy’ format à la Bernd and Hilla Becher. I’d only managed to visit two sites this year – the unusual clad structure at Meadowbank Mine in Winsford, and the two at Snibston…
Category: Heritage
#593 – Snibston – Part 3
Nothing to see here other than some self indulgent colour photographs of rust! The museum part of the colliery site has unfortunately been demolished, but as well as the headstocks, there are a number of other mining artefacts on display in front of the tandem headstocks.
#592 – Snibston Mine – Part 2
The reason I visited Snibston was to see if I could make some photographs for my ongoing typology project. As I mentioned in my previous post, I feared that as the site had closed, I would either have to jump a fence or shoot from the road. However, the site reopened in 2020, thus eliminating…
#591 – Snibston Mine – Part 1
My only previous visit to Snibston was in 2010 (here and here), I can’t recall the occasion but it was a rather nice setup, with the site of the colliery being nicely preserved with a modern museum and short heritage railway line featuring diesel and steam shunters hauling the ubiquitous BR Mk1 coach. It was…
#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…
#567 – Barnsley Main Colliery 1
I first saw Barnsley Main Colliery in (I think) 1994 when I visited Oakwell, the home of Barnsley Football Club for a Division 1 game against my team Bolton Wanderers. It was a wretched, soaking wet day, and the ancient wooden stand we sat in kept us relatively dry compared to the unfortunate souls on…
#566 – Astley Green Colliery 2
As the gates were shut and preparations for a post-lockdown reopening were still underway, I had to limit my photography to the view from the gate. This is where the camera on my phone comes in handy, as being able to poke it through the bars on the gate gave me a different perspective to…
#565 – Astley Green Colliery 1
Astley Green Colliery is only a 30 minute drive down the M61 from me, but I’ve not been since 2012, so I decided that my first post-lockdown jaunt would be for a quick look. As of the time of the visit (June 27th 2020), the place hadn’t yet reopened for visitors, but that was fine…
Mechanical Landscapes 