Mechanical Landscapes

Category: Urban Exploration

  • #444 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – London Road Fire Station, Manchester – 2

    #444 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – London Road Fire Station, Manchester – 2

    London road fire station is an amazing site, arguably well ahead of its time in that it was a multi purpose building featuring a fire station (plus accommodation), ambulance station, bank and a coroners court in one large triangular site in the heart of the city. It served as a fire station until the 1970’s…

  • #443 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – London Road Fire Station, Manchester – 1

    #443 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – London Road Fire Station, Manchester – 1

    Opportunities pass, they don’t pause, someone wise once told me. It was one of those passé sound bites that stuck with me and would spring to mind whenever an opportunity appeared, or more regularly when I failed to take one and regretted it after. So when out of the blue I was contacted by a…

  • #442 – Grafters Exhibition – Oldham Panorama

    #442 – Grafters Exhibition – Oldham Panorama

    If you’re a regular reader of this blog or my Planes, Boats, Trains blog, you’ll know my fascination for the Library of Congress archive, and especially the gigantic panoramas of industrial, urban and dockyard scenes. So you imagine my delight when I saw this gigantic panorama taken in Oldham in 1876 at the Grafters exhibition…

  • #441 – Brierfield Mill Part 8 – The Shopfloor

    #441 – Brierfield Mill Part 8 – The Shopfloor

    I’ve saved the shopfloor to last as, well, there wasn’t much of interest to shoot. 380000 square feet of basically f*** all and pigeons. The mill had been methodically stripped of everything. But as a photographer, that’s fine as it forces me to look beyond the empty space and try harder to see things. It…

  • #440 – Brierfield Mill Part 7 – Doors and (more) Windows

    #440 – Brierfield Mill Part 7 – Doors and (more) Windows

    Like all big mills, Brierfield has lots of windows. Hundreds of them. So here’s a few more, plus a door. Weaving shed floor. This was a more modern portal framed building roof built onto an older weaving shed, giving the place substantially more volume. This wall runs alongside the Leeds Liverpool Canal affording some lovely…

  • #439 – Brierfield Mill Part 6 – The Clock Tower

    #439 – Brierfield Mill Part 6 – The Clock Tower

    The clock tower is an interesting focal point from a photographic perspective. However on closer inspection it doesn’t look quite right. Site Supervisor Paul worked in the mill for a large part of his career and is of the opinion that not only is it a somewhat later addition, but that the design was actually…

  • #438 – Brierfield Mill Part 5 – The Clock

    #438 – Brierfield Mill Part 5 – The Clock

    One of the most interesting (and inaccessible) remains in the mill is the clock. It is electro-mechanical (electricity winds it up, effectively) and a lovely thing to behold. And to top things it off, it rings a large bell, which was inaccessible to a large fellow like myself. Carved into the wood supports for the…

  • #437 – Brierfield Mill Part 4 – Reception

    #437 – Brierfield Mill Part 4 – Reception

    The timber lined reception had been untouched by the demolition crew that had cleared out the admin building (the entire site is listed so no buildings are getting pulled down). It’s symmetry appealed to me so I made the most of it. Unfortunately all the offices had been stripped and the internal walls reduced to…

  • #436 – Brierfield Mill Part 3 – North Light Windows

    #436 – Brierfield Mill Part 3 – North Light Windows

    If you’ve seen my recent blog posts on the Rossendale mills, then this will look quite reminiscent of some of those. I’m not sure why I’ve developed a fascination for northlight windows, it’s probably just a passing whimsy, but in the right light they can look great. Unfortunately the winter sun was well off to…

  • #435 – Brierfield Mill Part 2 – Views Through a Window

    #435 – Brierfield Mill Part 2 – Views Through a Window

    Windows. This composition is something I’ve used successfully over the years and is one I still employ. I’m sure if a psychoanalyst saw them all he would interpret them as the sign of a troubled mind, but it’s just a composition I happen to like. I wanted to find ways of including the clock tower…

  • #434 – Brierfield Mill Part 1 – An Introduction

    #434 – Brierfield Mill Part 1 – An Introduction

    The M65 motorway was opened in sections between 1981 and 1988, and formed a link between Blackburn and Burnley, two old mill towns in terminal decline. So much so that it was nicknamed ‘the motorway from nowhere, to nowhere’. Maybe the planners simply had their map upside down, but the rest of the motorway i.e.…

  • #433 – The last days of Sunnyside Mills, Bolton

    #433 – The last days of Sunnyside Mills, Bolton

    I happened on this article last week and decided to take some time to get a few photographs of this landmark mill tower before it disappeared. I got there just in time. Demolition contractors were on site and much of the rest of the mill had already gone. It’s a difficult place to photograph as…

  • #431 – Rossendale Mills – Albert Mill, Haslingden 4

    #431 – Rossendale Mills – Albert Mill, Haslingden 4

    A slightly different perspective to the first one I posted in this series, but all 4 were taken within 20 feet of each other on the same stretch of pavement, albeit using either a 14mm, 18mm or a 35mm lens on my Fuji XT-10. It perhaps needs a little more ‘breathing space’ on either side…

  • #430 – Rossendale Mills – Albert Mill, Haslingden 3

    Saw tooth north light roofs are ubiquitous on textile mill weaving sheds, and can sometimes be found atop the multi storey spinning mills as well. It’s unusual to be able to look down on one from the ground though, but the local topography was on my side here. I’ve never really had the chance to…

  • #428 – Rossendale Mills – Albert Mill, Haslingden 2

    Haslingden. Someone once told me that there are only two types of weather in the East Lancashire town of Darwen – rain, or about to rain. In fairness, this is true of most of the East Lancashire mill towns, stuck in their little valleys or clung to hillsides. From a monochrome photographers perspective this is…

  • #421 – Rhydymwyn Valley Works, aka The Mustard Gas Factory, Part 2

      This pencil graffiti has lasted surprisingly well considering it is supposedly 70 years old……   Being a regular visitor to both derelict and active industrial sites, I’ve walked across all kinds of surfaces, but never a rubberised one. The site roads on the southern section were coated with a rubber like asphalt designed to stop…

  • #415 – Leigh Spinners Mill Engine – The Giant Awakes………..

    After years of service, the giant was no longer needed. Obsolete and old, it was given a spot of oil and the blankets were put on. The giant went to sleep, resting, and maybe mourning the loss of it’s twin next door, cut up by the scrapman after a boiler explosion ripped apart it’s lungs.…

  • #403 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 3

    #403 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 3

    Winding engine (I think) in one of the sheds. Just a few more random ones from the visit. It was good to have some expert accompaniment on the visit, so thanks again to Iain Robinson for spending a good part of the day with me as he’s very knowledgeable on the local quarry industry and…

  • #402 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 2

    #402 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 2

    While I’m not a frequent visitor to North Wales, I have visited at least annually over the past ten years, and had experienced only one sunny day in that time. So I was pleasantly surprised to experience the area when it wasn’t smothered in cloud, fog and rain. Photographically, this represented a departure from me for two…

  • #401 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 1

    #401 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 1

    I’ve no particular association with the area or the industry, but I have an odd fascination with the slate industry and the way it has shaped the landscape of North Wales. In most industries, once a plant has worn out or is rendered obsolete for whatever reason, the place is either raised to the ground and something…

  • #384 – Next exhibition – Shadows of the North at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum UPDATED WITH NEW DATE

    I am pleased to announce that my next exhibition will open on Monday 22nd 16th February 2015 at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum in Helmshore, near Rossendale in Lancashire. Shadows of the North is a complement to my Mechanical Landscapes exhibition and focuses on the textile mills of the north of England. It will be slightly larger…