Mechanical Landscapes

  • #314 – It’s not about the space. Or is it?

    I’ve just listened to a great interview on the Candid Frame podcast with Will Jacks. Over the past few years, he has been photographing the goings on in a Mississipi ‘Juke Joint’ a type of bar peculiar to that area of America. he goes every week,  has befriended the owner and clientele, and has gained their trust and…

  • #313 – The Duke of Lancaster’s New Clothes

    #313 – The Duke of Lancaster’s New Clothes

    Seeing the Duke of Lancaster from the road for the first time is a bit of a surreal experience. The North Wales coast road is a fairly uninteresting drive as coast roads go, you can rarely if ever see the sea, and the road is a frustrating affair of dual carriageways, single carriage ways, roundabouts,…

  • #312 – Mill Yard

    I revisited these pictures of Bailey Mill recently and re-processed them more to my liking. The first one is taken from the middle window of the bridge that you can see in the second picture. The bridge was well and truly sealed up at one end, so I couldn’t get into the other building, in…

  • #311 – Mechanical Engineering 2

    After posting the last photo of rusting machinery, I remembered this one I took of the old steam crane in the Jumbles Quarry. I wish I’d tried some different compositions as I don’t think this is the best one, but it’s the only one I took like this, regrettably. Whether a photo should have a focal point is a…

  • #310 – Mechanical Engineering 1

    I trained as a mechanical engineer, and I still love the fact that you can see what’s happening with mechanical devices. Of course some pieces of mechanical machinery are incredibly complicated, but motions, cams and flywheels are infinitely more interesting, visually at least, than the PLC’s used on modern machinery. I had to laugh when a metal spinner, a dark…

  • #309 – Brook Dyeing

    #309 – Brook Dyeing

    This place is long gone now, but was fairly typical of a semi-rural bleachworks that were common across Lancashire and Yorkshire until recently. Located next to a stream in Meltham, Royd Edge Mills was last home to Brook Dyeing who shut some time before 2007 when I went. It was pretty unremarkable apart from the…

  • #308 – Chatterley Whitfield

      This is a photograph that I missed from my post a while back on Chatterley Whitfield Colliery. The image here shows just how much infrastructure is left at the colliery, and the monumental job of upkeep that, well, hasn’t been taking place. When something like this is busy producing coal and making money, then…

  • Reduced Levels of Blog Posting :(

    Due to an absurd chain of events that would be laughable if it wasn’t for the vast levels of incompetence exhibited by both Sky and BT Openreach, I have had either no broadband at all or a very limited service for the last month or so. There is unfortunately no end in sight for this epic comedy of…

  • #307 – Chatham Dockyard 2 – Chains, Trains and Cranes

    #307 – Chatham Dockyard 2 – Chains, Trains and Cranes

    As well as the ships, the yard is stuffed full of all types of mechanical goodness. There is a short section of the once extensive railway system intact, along with a number of operational steam and diesel engines that work on some weekends. The big slipway is also full of a huge collection of machinery,…

  • #306 – Chatham Dockyard 1 – Ships

    DING, CLASH, DONG, BANG, BOOM, BOOM, RATTLE, CLASH, BANG, CLINK, BANG, CLATTER, BANG BANG BANG! What on earth is this! This is, or soon will be, the ACHILLES, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working on her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under…

  • #305 – Bad News From Brymbo

     If you’ve visited my website, you may have already seen this, but I wanted to spread the news through other channels as well. I have had the following sad news from the Brymbo Heritage Group who look after the last surviving buildings of the Brymbo Steelworks site in North Wales. “Due to the snow that…

  • #304 – Gate

    Oakenclough Paper mill was a large rural mill in he middle of nowhere that closed quite suddenly in the 1960’s. It is in a strangely isolated spot onthe edge of the moorland above Lancaster, and is still occupied by a number of busineses so there was no exploring to be done unfortunately. I was impressed…

  • #303 – Ivy Bank – Shadows of Change

    I love these long shadows! Like something out of scooby doo where the haunted house becomes alive and the windows become eyes. Backlighting (centre jour) can do interesting things, and this was taken on an April morning, when the sun was still low in the sky.

  • #302 – Loom Of Doom

    In the corner of the top floor of Bailey Mill, sat this, one of the last looms produced by the Dobcross loom company in nearby Diggle. The loom industry used to be huge, with the likes of British Northrop in Blackburn employing 3000 people at their massive site in Blackburn. But with the rapid decline of…

  • #301 – Closing forever

    Multipart, Pilling Lane, Chorley, May 2007 As part of the once-vast British Leyland empire, the huge Pilling Lane site in Chorley was a distribution centre for Multipart, BL’s spares arm. In the early 80’s large amounts of money were spent on the site making it into a state of the art facility according to contemporary…

  • #300 – Old Lane Mill Again

    I just can’t get the sky right on this. Well, when I say ‘right’ I mean, that I’m struggling to get a look that appears in fitting with the rest of the image. It was dull overcast day, and although I’ve been able to recover some sky detail from the raw file, I can’t seem…

  • #299 – The Hotseat

    Take a seat! Brook Dyeing 2007. It’s gone now, and there wasn’t much to see in the first place, other then the remains of the water wheel pit, but I recently stumbled across this photo I’d forgotten about.

  • #298 – Ainscoughs Flour Mill

    #298 – Ainscoughs Flour Mill

    Another joint explore with Gibbo and R1. Standing prominent on the rural south Lancashire flatlands, is a tall brick chimney and a Victorian flour mill. Probably the largest and highest structure between Liverpool and Preston, Ainscough’s flour mill was once a major employer in the quiet little town of Burscough. It closed in the late 90’s…

  • #297 – Ratten Clough Barn, Brinscall

    I used to live in the village of Brinscall, a small slightly industrial village on the edge of Chorley. It’s notable primarily for its swimming pool, an unusual facility for a rural village with a small population, but you’d be surprised at how many people I meet who claim to have learnt how to swim…

  • #296 – Man Made Mountains Project

    Man Made Mountains from Fourth Dimension on Vimeo. Not my work, but an excellent video that is definitely worth a look! I struggled to understand what the project was all about at first, but realised that the end product was in effect a temporary exhibition of the photographs taken of the slate industry, in the…

  • #295 – Old Urbex Reports – Pyestock Part 2

    #295 – Old Urbex Reports – Pyestock Part 2

    And so on to the famous air house. This large building contained 8 centrifugal compressor/exhauster sets that blew large volumes of high pressure air to all the test bays across site, and is probably the best known building due to the huge number of photographs on urbex sites of its multi coloured turbines. I had…