Mechanical Landscapes

  • #471 – The View From The North 10 Year Retrospective – Book Now Available

    #471 – The View From The North 10 Year Retrospective – Book Now Available

    In 2007, I decided to create a website. I can’t remember why, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. I’ve never looked back. To celebrate the first ten years, I’ve pulled together a book of some of my favourite images. Truth be told, I’d have liked to include a lot…

  • #470 – Best of 2016 part 3

    #470 – Best of 2016 part 3

    So a (belated) third part to my 2016 retrospective continues with a quick look at Mutual Mills in Heywood – not an explore, more a drive by as I was in the area. I’ve a few more from the Manchester area that I’ve not yet got round to posting up – I’ll put these up some…

  • #468 – Best of 2016 part 1

    So, it’s a few years since I did this, but as 2016 has been a productive year photographically, I think it’s time for a retrospective. I guess it’s down to the fact that over the past few years I’ve been busy with my career and family has meant that taking photographs has not been a…

  • #467 – Return to Grove Rake 2

    #467 – Return to Grove Rake 2

      Something I found on the photographs from last time was that they suffered from the lack of dynamic range of the sensor in my Nikon D70. I did bracket many of the images but not all, and consequently, some of the images were technically lacking, but I like to think I captured the spirit…

  • #469 – Best of 2016 Part 2

    The early year tour of mills in monochrome, came to a shuddering halt when I was approached by a PR company to do an urbex style shoot using the new Samsung Galaxy S7. London Road Fire Station in Manchester was the first location, a magnificent late Victorian building that was last used in the 90’s,…

  • #466 – Return to Grove Rake 1

    #466 – Return to Grove Rake 1

    I rarely return to places I’ve explored, primarily because they tend to be demolished, regenerated or burnt down in the time that follows my visit. I made an exception this week to revisit Grove Rake Mine on the windswept wastes of County Durham, a place I previously explored in November 2008. The place was as…

  • #465 – Shadows of the North Second Edition now on sale!!

    #465 – Shadows of the North Second Edition now on sale!!

    I am pleased to announce that having sold out the first run of Shadows of The North, I have produced an expanded second edition, with many new photographs from 2016 including Brierfield Mill, Hope Mill, Ancoats and several others. I’ve also had a shuffle round of the existing images. The book is now 94 pages…

  • #464 – Shipbreaking in Morecambe

    #464 – Shipbreaking in Morecambe

    Quite how I came across the fact that Morecambe was once a major shipbreaking port is unclear. I think it was through researching something vaguely related but several steps later I stumbled across it somewhere en route. Either way, there’s not a whole lot of information on the net, but I found out that a book…

  • #463 – English Fine Cottons – a tour of Tower Mill

    #463 – English Fine Cottons – a tour of Tower Mill

    If, on the off-chance you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might recall me mentioning on a number of occasions that the only things made in Manchester these days are cornflakes and Coronation Street. I’m only half joking here – large scale manufacturing has been decimated while new industries such as media have prospered.…

  • #462 – Mechanical Landscapes Website Relaunch

    So after two years of wrestling with my Zenfolio hosted http://www.mechanicallandscapes.com, I’ve ditched it and moved to Squarespace. While I can’t fault Zenfolio’s customisation options, it drove me round the twist sometimes, and despite doing everything recommended on the SEO front, traffic was next to nothing. So I’ve cut my losses and built a much simpler site…

  • #461 – Chatterley Whitfield Revisited 2

    #461 – Chatterley Whitfield Revisited 2

    Institute shaft looming overhead. The view from the landscapes slagheap. The Chatterley Whitfield company logo, cast in iron. Platt Shaft headgear. The looming bulk of the Hesketh. And another one, a little further away. I wanted to frame it between some of the surface buildings to give it a little more context. Steam boilers. These weren’t…

  • #460 – Chatterley Whitfield Revisited 1

    #460 – Chatterley Whitfield Revisited 1

    I rarely go and revisit places that I’ve photographed, with only a handful of exceptions e.g. Bailey Mill last week. Partly this is due to sating may curiosity first time round, and partly due to my usual modus operandi of being one step ahead of the demolition crews. In Chatterley Whitfield’s case, my curiosity wasn’t…

  • #459 – Bailey Mill Revisited

    #459 – Bailey Mill Revisited

    In the summer of 2007 I was on a bit of an exploration rampage, visiting over a dozen sites in a few months. One of my favourites was Bailey Mill in Delph. I’d been tipped off that the metal thieves had forced their way in and were just loading up their highly chromed Transits with copper…

  • #458 – Burnley Gas Holder Demolition

    Like a giant toy, the old gas holder at Burnley is being dismantled piece by piece. Unlike the demolition of buildings, gas holders are disassembled piece by piece (a great time lapse can be found here). Although I know that gas holders were slowly disappearing from our landscape (see my earlier post on the Blackburn gas…

  • #457 – Scunthorpe steelworks revisited

    While the photographs I present on my websites etc are often heavily processed, they are all ‘straight’ pictures. Recently though, I have been experimenting with textures to see if the addition of these to an image can bring something else to it. For this experiment, I selected my images of the steelworks at Scunthorpe, a…

  • #456 – Mutual Mills

    #456 – Mutual Mills

    In 1965, Mutual Mills had more than 1,000 people on the payroll and, as well as its textiles operation, had its own Adelaide Engineering division on site (who are still active on site as a sub-contract machining operation). In the 1970s and early 1980s, Heywood’s textile mills were closing down at a rapid rate, blaming…

  • #462 – Book Review – The Rouge by Michael Kenna

    I’ve had a long fascination with the steel industry. Where this stems from I don’t know, possibly from my time at technical college learning metallurgy from a former British Steel metallurgist, and getting my head round such terms as Jominy End Quench, and other such stuff. The attraction of the photography of Michael Kenna is…

  • #455 – Vernon Carus Revisited

    #455 – Vernon Carus Revisited

    I visited Vernon Carus’ old Penwortham Mills site back in 2007, not long after the site had closed and work transferred to a new factory round the corner from my house in Chorley. At the time, there was a full time security guard on site who kindly let me wander round for a couple of…

  • #454 – Lambert Howarth Mill Demolition

    I’d read that this mill was being demolished, but hadn’t been able to get over to see it, until demolition was pretty much complete. This is probably the last bit of the Weavers Triangle to be redeveloped, and had been empty since Lambert Howarth closed in 2005 after the owners Lambert Howarth lost a contract with M&S.…

  • #453 – Colne Mills

    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…

  • #452 – Rossendale Mills – The Lancashire Sock Company

    Not too long ago, there were many little mills, bleachers and dyers in the valleys of northern England. The past 20 years has seen them disappear or redeveloped into apartments, as property prices increase and gentrified semi-rural living has become more popular. The valleys of Rossendale though are strangely untouched in this regard, with many…