Category: Urban Landscape
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#660 – Middleport Flour Mill, Stoke
I took a wander round the Middleport area as I wanted to photograph the bottle kilns at Furlong Mills (not the easiest things to photograph and they’re not very interesting photos), but a tall brick chimney nearby piqued my interest. Turns out it was the Middleport pottery, which I didn’t have the time to go…
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#649 – Imperial Mill Blackburn
I lived in Blackburn for a few years in the late 90’s / early 2000’s and used to work near this place, Imperial Mill. I took some photographs of it that I don’t think I’ve ever put on here but you might have seen the one above on my website if you’ve ever visited it.…
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#647 – Stonebridge Mill, Oswaldtwistle 2
In days gone by, a mill at the end of the street was a common site in Lancashire and Yorkshire, with the terraced housing being built for the mill workers. Let’s not romanticise it though – these places were noisy and had smoke billowing out of the chimney 24/7 so I can’t imagine they were…
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#639 – South Wales Road Trip Part 7 – Port Talbot
I’d seen a few views of Port Talbot taken from the hills that overlook the town so wanted to go and have a look at the view myself. My contact who knew the area well warned me that the path up from the town was steep and boy was he right! After a good number…
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#637 – South Wales Road Trip Part 5 – Port Talbot
A few years ago I’d seen a photo on Flickr taken from a street in the Margam district, that depicted a blast furnace towering over the terraced housing. This was exactly the kind of scene which fascinates me and I resolved to make my own version of the photo. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised that there…
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#636 – South Wales Road Trip Part 4 – Penallta
The aerial photograph from 1930 of the site shows what I think is a coal washery along with extensive railway sidings to the east of the site. These are long gone and housing has recently been built on the site, it as this is at a lower elevation than the colliery, the headframe on the…
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#615 – Lees Brook Mill 2 – Reflections and other perspectives
Legend has it that Oldham once had over 360 mills chimneys – ‘one for every day of the year’ which meant that it had at least as many mills. Indeed, Oldham was the centre of the world when it came to cotton production – in 1913, 10% of the world’s production came from Oldham and…
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#613 – Manchester – A Strange Survivor From The Past
Much of Manchester’s industrial past is exactly that – in the past. For better or worse, there is less and less evidence that it was a major industrial city and the skyline is now one of shimmering glass towers. I did think that the only remaining chimney was at Bloom Street power station, itself now…
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#596 – A Return to Hartford Mill 2
I took a photograph from the Metrolink station on my previous visit (below), but it wasn’t that good so I didn’t do anything with it . In fairness, it was a truly awful day with heavy rain and high winds making photography difficult as I was constantly wiping rain drops off the front element of…
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#588 – India Mill Chimney, Darwen
My recent photos of the hilly landscape of Rotherham, and Jack Delano’s photograph of the Pittsburgh steps brought to mind the town of Darwen, a short drive from the Lancastrian flatlands of Chorley where I live. Like many northern towns, Darwen is in a valley, with some brutally steep streets heading up to the moors…
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#587 – Steeltown Landscapes 2
Unlike the sprawling, overwhelmingly oppressive landscape of the steelworks at Scunthorpe with its acres of cooling towers, blast furnaces, coke ovens, conveyers and other artefacts of industry, the visual landscape of the Aldwarke steelworks in Rotherham is more generically industrial. Like Scunthorpe, it’s not easy to photograph from directly outside, you have to go on…
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#586 – Steeltown Landscapes 1
I posted a few photos a while back of Rotherham, a South Yorkshire steel town and neighbour to its more celebrated neighbour Sheffield. Britain once had many steel towns but there are relatively few now. The steel industry in Britain was once enormous and employed hundreds of thousands of people, and the economies of many…
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#579 – Steeltown Panorama – Scunthorpe
After visiting Rotherham, I headed for Scunthorpe, as I’d booked to go on a train ride round the steelworks with the Appleby and Frodingham Railway Preservation Society. The society are based on the steelworks site and run brake van tours of the steelworks railway system, but more about that in upcoming posts. Before I went…
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#578 – Steeltown Panorama – Rotherham
I’d seen similar photographs to this a few times over the past rather, mainly when Rotherham hit the headlines for the child grooming gangs operating in the town. Now I don’t want to get into that side of the story (and any comments posted about it will be deleted), but the photograph itself was an…
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#552 – A Decade of Industrial Photography – Final Reflections
I always used to worry that I’d run out of places and things to photograph. It’s not so much that I let my photography define my identity, as I enjoy the whole process of research, photographing, and processing my photographs. Over the past decade, my focus has moved away from urban exploration and more into…
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#551 – Review of the decade – 2019
As per the last few years, 2019 saw no urbex and a continuing focus on the industrial and urban landscape. After several years of waiting for a drone with the spec I wanted at the right price I finally took the plunge and bought a DJI Mavic Pro 2 and it’s seen a bit of…
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#550 – Review of the decade – 2018
A most productive year, with a revisit to Redcar, some abandonment – albeit explored with permission – and more experimentation with long exposures. Pincroft Dyers – January 2018 I live at the other end of Chorley to this Dyeworks, pretty much the last remnant of Chorley’s textile industry that is still in use. It’s in…
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#548 – Review of the decade – 2016
A more stable role at work meant I had more time to focus on photography and an opportunity fell into my lap – a commission from a PR company working for O2 who wanted to use me for a job. I also revisited two sites from a few years back, visited a re-opened Mancunian cotton…
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#547 – Review of the decade – 2015
Another demanding year – my grandmother’s health faded further and she sadly died in November. Overseas travel continued but the project was starting to wind down so I transferred to a different role. I started to pick up some momentum with my photography again with a couple of trips to North Wales and a couple…
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#545 – Review of the decade – 2014
A third barren year in succession – when will the tide turn? Time moves on and my daughter started school, business travel overseas and my grandmother’s ongoing struggle with dementia meant that again my priorities were elsewhere. But two sites visited meant a 100% improvement on 2013! Cwm Bychan Ropeway – May 2014 I’ve not…
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#544 – Review of the decade – 2013
2013 was a very demanding year – my grandparents traumatic struggle with dementia and illness which resulted in my grandfather’s death in December, a change of role at work which saw me traveling overseas regularly and moving house (just up the road) – meant photography got shunted further down the list of priorities. I did…
Mechanical Landscapes 