Category: Industrial Landscape
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#222 – Derelict Mills – Part 10 – Vernon Carus
More often than not, the places I go are dead. Not just as a building, but the companies that inhabited it have also died, along with all the traditions, products and culture that was unique to that enterprise. Technology and commerce move on, budgets shrink, new companies with lower costs come into the market, older companies…
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#221 – Derelict Mills – Part 9 – Albion Mill
It’s weird and slightly perverse how some places that I’ve visited have ended up. The ruin that was Cheadle Bleachworks, a place that looked like it had been carpet bombed, ended up as luxury apartments, while this place, as sturdy and intact a mill as I’ve explored, ended up being demolished not long after I…
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#220 – Derelict Mills – Part 8 – Griffe Mill
When you are particularly interested in something, you develop a consciousness for it. Professor Peter Wiseman in his brilliant book ‘The Luck Factor’ writes at length about this phenomena, and how people who believe that they are lucky or unlucky see and do things that back up that conviction – spotting five-pound notes on the…
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#219 – Derelict Mills – Part 7 Ivy Bank Mill
The diversity of places that I’ve explored has ranged from completely intact places like Pyestock and Fletchers Paper Mill, to stripped out hulks such as Old Lane Mill. But this would suggest that some kind of spectrum of dereliction exists with fully intact at one end and empty shells at the other, when in actual…
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#218 – Derelict Mills – Part 6 – Westwood Mill
Sometimes I feel compelled to go and visit places, even if I’m not in the right frame of mind. I’d had my eye on this place for a while, and I needed to visit somewhere to photograph for a nightschool project. Reports on the internet showed it to be pretty stripped out, but with one…
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#216 – Derelict Mills – Part 5 – Old Lane Mill
Maybe as late as ten years ago, I’d never have found a place like this. I often use Geograph to search for places, and came across this place in Ovenden, near Halifax. Thanks to the power of the internet, it’s possible to scout for locations without leaving the comfort of your own home. Tools such as…
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#215 – Derelict Mills – Part 4 – Edenwood Mill
Success in many fields is all about timing, being in the right place at the right time. Take football. There are numerous players who made decent careers out of not doing a great deal effort wise, but had the seemingly uncanny knack of suddenly coming alive once or twice in a game and ending up…
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#214 – Derelict Mills – Part 3 – Knoll (Wellington) Mills
Despite training as an engineer, and even being recognised by the Engineering Council as a Chartered Engineer, I can be a bit of a Luddite when it comes to new technology. Take sat navs. My theory is that you only really need them for the last 5 miles of a journey as you can get…
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#212 – Derelict Mills – Part 2 Bailey Mill
Sometimes windows of opportunity open and you happen to be in the right place at the right time. This was the case when I explored Bailey Mill in Delph in 2007. I’d seen a couple of report on the place on 28 Days Later, and got in touch with the last person to explore it.…
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#211 – Derelict Mills – Part 1 Bradshaw Works
Printing & Steaming Building. Much of the foreground was cleared of buildings in the 1960’s. The buildings here were the Making Up, Stitching & Damping Room, and the Colour and Roller Store Growing up in the magnificent Lancashire town of Bolton, I was surrounded by the derelict and decaying remnants of the towns textile industry.…
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#204 – ticket to Ryde 2
OK, here’s a few more of the PS Ryde in the Isle Of Wight. I’d like to have taken a longer, closer look, but that just wasn’t possible in the circumstances unfortunately. The hull is in a terrible state. Note that it’s rusted through in places – mind you the ship was built in the…
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#203 – ticket to ryde 1
As I drove onto the crunchy gravel car park of the swish, modern marina near Newport on the Isle of Wight, it occurred to me what an odd location this was for the beached, rusting paddle steamer PS Ryde. The futuristic harbour control centre, million pound yachts and motor cruisers seemed a world away…
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#181 – Thorpe Marsh Revisit part 5 – Self Portrait
Unlike many explorers, I rarely do self portraits, in fact I’m rarely photographed at all, as I’m usually on the other side of the camera. Plus, I rarely bother to take a tripod out when I explore, without which self portraiture is troublesome. Hence, I suffer from a crippling lack of imagination when I do it,…
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#180 – Thorpe Marsh Revisit Part 4 – 3 Kings
Similar to a photo from my last visit, but with a slightly different sky, I captured this just as the mist was clearing. It’s still a colour photo, but you’d be hard pressed to tell as it’s a somewhat monochromatic scene.
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#179 – Thorpe Marsh Revisit part 3 – Railway Miscellenea
Like pretty much all power stations, Thorpe Marsh was rail linked, in fact it sits alongside the East Coast Main Line. For some reason, the sidings are still intact, albeit heavily overgrown with those trees that seem to grow spontaneously on all disused railway lines. Intriguingly, there are also bits of the signalling insfrastructure still…
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#178 – Thorpe Marsh Revisit part 2 – Inside The Egg Cup
Ever wondered what it looks like inside a cooling tower? It looks like this:) Well stripped out ones do. Normally they have all kinds of cooling gubbins in, but this is just a shell. The fog had just lifted, although the sky is still slightly hazy, but the hint of a shadow shows that the…
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#177 – Thorpe Marsh Revisit – part 1
I’ve been fascinated by power stations and cooling towers since my dad took me to see the massive cooling towers at Kearsley Power Station in Bolton being blown up in 1984. Dad had grown up in their shadow in the 50’s and 60’s and it was fairly poignant for him to see them come down.…
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#176 – The Last Days Of Fernhurst Mill – DoF Tomfoolery
With the trespassing element of the visit complete, I thought I’d indulge in a bit of creative arty-fartyness. Nikon D700, 28-70mm, 1/1600 @F2.8
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#175 – The Last Days Of Fernhurst Mill – Return Visit
Depending on the circumstances, there are two approaches to exploring old buildings – stealth or high visibility. Dressing in high visibility vest and hard hat makes you look inconspicuous around an abandoned building or demolition site, as that’s what you’d expect people to wear around those places, yes? OK, its not infallible, but for sites where there’s no security,…
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#170 – Beamish Part 1 – Big Stuff
A weeks holiday in the north east allowed for a visit to the Beamish Open Air Museum. I’d last visited about 20 years ago, and my memories were somewhat sketchy to say the least, but a check of their website suggested that a few new areas had been added to the site, so it had…
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#169 – Attack Of The Giant Egg Cups – Thorpe Marsh Part 3
Ever take a photo that is deeply satisfying? This one does it for me. OK, there was a bit of post processing involved and cropping involved to get the image as I wanted it, but the simplicity of this is something I really enjoy. No fancy compositions, no foreground interest, just three towers from a few…
Mechanical Landscapes 