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…
Category: Urban Exploration
#445 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – London Road Fire Station, Manchester – 3
Final selection from London Road. Not much else to say really that I haven’t already said. A word or two about the phone – yes, I was being paid to shoot these photographs, but that aside, I was very impressed. The HDR mode was immensely useful in these high contrast conditions, and the screen was fabulous….
#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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…
Mechanical Landscapes 