Category: Urban Exploration
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#167 – Attack Of The Giant Egg Cups – Thorpe Marsh Part 1
Thorpe Marsh near Doncaster. Dust blowing everywhere, high winds nearly blowing me out of my size 10 work boots, and a post apolcalyptic landscape. Need to go back for another look.
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#144 – Book Review – Henk van Rensbergens Abandoned Places 2
After months waiting for the book to arrive (I ordered it in June), Amazon have finally delivered my copy of Henk van Rensbergens new book, Abandoned Places II. Ok, so the title lacks a bit of imagination, but in fairness Abandoned Places is the name of his website, and the photographs definitely don’t lack imagination, and…
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#135 – Mechanical Landscapes Book Now On Sale!
Despite a complete lack of public demand, I have just self published a book on Blurb;) Actually, lets make this clear, this book is for me, but if for some reason other people wish to buy it, then they can do, it’s listed at cost price so I ain’t making any kind of profit, at least initially.…
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#133 – Narrow Gauge in North Lancashire
Unlike my post a few weeks back on the West Lancashire Narrow Gauge, this railway no longer exists. It was only in existence for about ten years during the 1920’s – 1930’s, to assist in the construction of the Stocks Reservoir, deep in the Trough Of Bowland. It linked the Jumbles Quarry with the main construction…
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#131 – Finishing Department
Sometimes as explorers and even as photographers, we overlook the stuff closest to home and yet travel for miles to see other stuff. Such was the case with this old mill near my house in Chorley. It’s literally 5 minutes away, and although I was aware it was empty, I’d never made the effort to…
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#123 – Loch Of Tranquility?
A group of us had gone to Scotland for a very pleasant week at a ‘castle’ on the bank of Loch Long, and I’d done a bit of research to see if there was anything in the vicinity worth exploring. The only thing easily accessible was the abandoned Admiralty Torpedo Testing Station at the other…
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#121 – Hot Work
It’s easy to see industrial sites through rose tinted glasses when walking round old, derelict sites or museums, but I’ve spent my career in factories and I know that even today, industry can be hot, hard, sometimes dangerous work. This old foundry is a great example of that – podging rods such as this were used to tap the hot…
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#120 – Cupola Flowers!
Like all abandoned sites, nature has taken up where it left off before the site was developed.
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#117 – Lethal Processes
I don’t know what this building used to do at Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Wrexham, but I suspect it was something dangerous that involved making or processing something lethal. Either way, it’s remained unused for over 60 years, the only evidence left being the foundations for something, and a large sunken pool of water at one end…
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#116 – Grown Up Scalextric – Chassis
One I missed from the series of images that I posted from the Leyland Test Track. I’ve since been told that this is probably a wrecked computer monitor, but I saw it and noticed the word ‘chassis’ on it’s base and thought it appropriate. It’s perhaps not as prominent in the composition as I’d have…
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#115 – Pattern
Pattern found in the foundry. Note sure why, but casting patterns are often painted red (although you can’t see that in this photo). There were quite a few patterns left around the place, quite surprised they’d not gone on a bonfire when the place shut.
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#114 – Book Review – Forbidden Places
There’s one or two urbex books being published by mainstream publishers (there’s an awful lot being self-published on Blurb), the most notable being the superb Abandoned Places by Henk van Rensbergen, which I posted a review of last year. Forbidden Places is very much in the same vein. The book is by Sylvain Margaine, who…
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#113 – 13
Huge bowl mounted on a railway wagon for transporting iron round the works. Sometimes photos work just as well in colour as they do in black and white, this is an example of that, as the rich brown texture of the image is such a dominant part of the composition. By converting to black and white,…
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#112 – Terex
This giant dumptruck had its engine removed before being dragged by a bulldozer up the hill to its current resting place. I can only imagine the strength of the guy who apparently sat in the cab and steered it while it was under tow as without an engine there’s be no power steering!
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#111 Bunker
Entrance to some kind of bunker at ROF Wrexham. This was once a huge site, but it was closed after WW2 and most of it has been cleared for the Wrexham Industrial Estate. A few buildings remain, but are often innaccesible due to the thick undergrowth that, especially in summer, prevent you getting anywhere near.
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#110 – Grown Up Scalextric – One Way
I quickly got bored of photographing tarmac. I can do that in my street outside my house, so I looked for things that made this place unique. There weren’t too many, but there one or two things that made it interesting.
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#109 – Grown Up Scalextric – Tyres
I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see piles of tyres at the test track. Turns out most of them were to indicate where manholes were, becuase the manhole covers had all been nicked. However, it did seem appropriate somehow.
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#108 – Grown Up Scalextric – Armco
I used to have a Scalextric when I was younger, complete with banked corners, cross-overs and all sorts. At around that time, this place was in full swing, testing trucks from the production lines at the nearby Leyland Motors Works. Since then, the place has gone into an irreversible decline, and like pretty much all of…
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#102 – If You Go Down In The Woods Today….
….you might just find this place. This old railway warehouse was used as a transhipment point for coal that was loaded onto a huge conveyor that bridged the valley and delivered it to the former Hartshead Power Station. By the look of this place, it was probably built before the power station, and has lasted…
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#98 – Horwich Loco Works
Horwich Loco Works is somewhere I’ve been meaning to look at for some time, but never got round to it. For years I’ve looked at it’s huge long brick Erecting Shop as I pass it on the M61, and last went in the early 90’s when the site was used for car boot sales on…
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#90 – Buxton Lime Firm 2
Another one from Buxton. As before, processed in Nik Silver Efex Pro, using the Wet Rocks filter and (I think) the Ilford Delta 100 effect.
Mechanical Landscapes 