Category: Urban Exploration
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#292 – Re-visiting photos 1
I’m in the middle of putting some themed Blurb books together and went for a rummage round the darker recesses of my Lightroom catalogue. Lightroom is a great piece of software and I now tend to do much of my photo editing on it (apart form mono conversions and multi layer work), and it’s a vastly…
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#290 – Book Review – Detroit Disassembled
Andrew Moore’s ‘Detroit Disassembled’ is a book that’s been on my wish list for a couple of years now. I’d discovered it just after it came out, as it was released at a similar time to the eye-wateringly expensive ‘The Ruins Of Detroit’ by Yves Marchand, but at about half the price. It’s certainly got…
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#267 – Brymbo Photographs in Urban Realm Magazine
I correspond every now again with Mark Chalmers who shares an interest in urban exploration, and he recently asked me if he could use some photos from Brymbo Steelworks to illustrate an article he was writing for Urban Realm magazine . The article is a feature on a final year MA architecture project based on…
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#262 – Prestolite of Leyland
I was quite surprised to stumble across this vast crumbling edifice, less than 10 minutes from my home, as most of the former Leyland Motors plants in Leyland had been cleared. Yet, sat behind rows of houses and a dense row of shrubs was this huge, wartime-era factory, now empty after its last occupants…
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#261 – Cheadle Bleachworks
For reasons that are, at best unclear, and at worse, downright weird, I have this thing about industrial ruins. Not so ruined that you can’t tell what it was, but ruined enough to be beyond repair. Proper mongy old crap – roofs caved in, doors hanging off and such like. They’re usually quick to explore…
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#259 – Staffordshire Collieries Part 1 – Chatterley Whitfield
Another one from the archives here, this was an ‘official’ visit to this crumbling edifice on a so-called open day. Actually, that’s being harsh and doing a disservice to our guides from the Friends of Chatterley Whitfield, who are probably more disappointed about the condition of this place than anyone else, and I’m sure…
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#245 – Dinorwic Slate Quarry
Bridge Of Doom? No, the gallery had given way beneath this track panel, leaving it suspended precariously in mid-air. Remains of a weighbridge Could there be a more appropriate landscape in which to film ‘Clash Of The Titans’? OK, so I’ve not actually seen the film in its entirety, but when security told me that…
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#243 – Failed Heritage – Dunaskin Brickworks
I’m a regular visitor to Ayrshire on the west coast of Scotland, and ever since my first visit, I’ve been intrigued by its industrial past. The cross country road from the M8 to Kilmarnock, Ayr, etc crosses a bleak, moorland landscape, pockmarked by past and current mining activities. Today, it’s exclusively opencast, but until the…
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#242 – Loch Long Torpedo Testing Station
For a good period of my career, I worked in a compact disc manufacturing plant. Thanks to continuous investment, the factory was arguably a world class facility with excellent yields, excellent quality and the capacity and expertise to be highly responsive to customer demands. Despite all this, it closed in 2009. CD’s were rapidly becoming…
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#236 – Best of 2011 Part 2
Misty paraboloids The further I drove into Yorkshire, the foggier it became. In fact, I couldn’t even see the cooling towers until I was right next to them, and this was the site I was met with when I entered the site. Eerie. Three Kings, Thorpe Marsh As the fog cleared, the sun made an…
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#235 – Best of 2011 Part 1
In an idea shamelessly ripped off from Martin Creese’s excellent blog, I’ve decided to post up some of my favourite photos from the past year. Regular readers will probably recognise these pictures, but I’m halfway through writing half a dozen posts currently, so this seemed like a quick and easy way to fill in the…
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#231 – Huncoat Power Station
East Lancashire is a pretty grim place, and I’m saying that from the bitter experience as I used to live and work there. Most of the large private employers have moved out, and with the current swingeing public sector cuts, it ain’t getting any better. If it wasn’t for the aerospace sector, there would be very…
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#230 – Grove Rake Fluorite Mine
Britain is a pretty compact nation, and you’re ultimately never that far from civilisation. Compared to say America, where you can drive all day and still not get across a state, in Britain, you’d run out of road before running out of day. So to go somewhere by road that is truly in the ‘middle…
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#229 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 3
The ‘Top Mill’ that we explored is in the background. Here, Azubi is enquiring if it would be at all possible to come in and have a look round. The light was fading fast now, and we made our way down the footpath down the side of the site, to the driveway back to the…
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#228 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 2
Employees Handbook para (d) Long Service Benefits It is hoped that your association with the Company will be a long one, and that you will qualify for a Long Service Award. After 42 years’ service, men receive a gold watch, and after 37 years’ service, women receive a silver teapot. Big, bad Beloit from Bolton. The room…
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#227 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 1
Employees Handbook para (b) Employees’ Transport For the convenience of shift workers arriving and leaving at 6.00a.m., 20.. p..m and 10.00 p.pm. daily, a bus service is operated between Oldham and the Mill, via Lees and Mossley. Employees wishing to avail themselves of this service may obtain from the Time Office particulars of fares charged and the necessary…
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#223- Derelict Mills 11 – Oakwood Mill
Some places are so derelict that they aren’t even worth spending much time photographing, let alone trying to find a way in. I’d spotted this place near to the old Railway Warehouse hidden in the woods in Mossley, so after mooching round there for a while, I thought I’d have a look at this place.…
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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…
Mechanical Landscapes 