Institute shaft looming overhead. The view from the landscapes slagheap. The Chatterley Whitfield company logo, cast in iron. Platt Shaft headgear. The looming bulk of the Hesketh. And another one, a little further away. I wanted to frame it between some of the surface buildings to give it a little more context. Steam boilers. These weren’t…
Category: Industrial Landscape
#460 – Chatterley Whitfield Revisited 1
I rarely go and revisit places that I’ve photographed, with only a handful of exceptions e.g. Bailey Mill last week. Partly this is due to sating may curiosity first time round, and partly due to my usual modus operandi of being one step ahead of the demolition crews. In Chatterley Whitfield’s case, my curiosity wasn’t…
#459 – Bailey Mill Revisited
In the summer of 2007 I was on a bit of an exploration rampage, visiting over a dozen sites in a few months. One of my favourites was Bailey Mill in Delph. I’d been tipped off that the metal thieves had forced their way in and were just loading up their highly chromed Transits with copper…
#458 – Burnley Gas Holder Demolition
Like a giant toy, the old gas holder at Burnley is being dismantled piece by piece. Unlike the demolition of buildings, gas holders are disassembled piece by piece (a great time lapse can be found here). Although I know that gas holders were slowly disappearing from our landscape (see my earlier post on the Blackburn gas…
#457 – Scunthorpe steelworks revisited
While the photographs I present on my websites etc are often heavily processed, they are all ‘straight’ pictures. Recently though, I have been experimenting with textures to see if the addition of these to an image can bring something else to it. For this experiment, I selected my images of the steelworks at Scunthorpe, a…
#456 – Mutual Mills
In 1965, Mutual Mills had more than 1,000 people on the payroll and, as well as its textiles operation, had its own Adelaide Engineering division on site (who are still active on site as a sub-contract machining operation). In the 1970s and early 1980s, Heywood’s textile mills were closing down at a rapid rate, blaming…
#462 – Book Review – The Rouge by Michael Kenna
I’ve had a long fascination with the steel industry. Where this stems from I don’t know, possibly from my time at technical college learning metallurgy from a former British Steel metallurgist, and getting my head round such terms as Jominy End Quench, and other such stuff. The attraction of the photography of Michael Kenna is…
#455 – Vernon Carus Revisited
I visited Vernon Carus’ old Penwortham Mills site back in 2007, not long after the site had closed and work transferred to a new factory round the corner from my house in Chorley. At the time, there was a full time security guard on site who kindly let me wander round for a couple of…
#454 – Lambert Howarth Mill Demolition
I’d read that this mill was being demolished, but hadn’t been able to get over to see it, until demolition was pretty much complete. This is probably the last bit of the Weavers Triangle to be redeveloped, and had been empty since Lambert Howarth closed in 2005 after the owners Lambert Howarth lost a contract with M&S….
#453 – Colne Mills
North Valley Road through Colne used to be lined with several sister mills to the Smith & Nephew Brierfield Mills, but all have been demolished and replaced with shiny new supermarkets and car dealerships which gives a veneer of modernity to impress people passing through. But away from this facade is another typical East Lancashire…
Mechanical Landscapes 