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…
Tag: Bamber Bridge Mill
#503 – 500 Post Retrospective No.3 – Mills
The mills of the north of England have held a lifelong fascination for me. Growing up in Bolton in the 1980’s meant that the towns industrial heyday had long passed and while there were still plenty of mills around, hardly any were still spinning cotton and with every passing year, more and more mills were…
#323 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 7 – a few more in monochrome
As I was about to go on holiday, I thought I’d swing by after work to get a few more shots of the mill, in case it had gone by the time I got back (it hadn’t, it was still there). The evening sun was largely in my favour, and with a cloudy sky, there…
#322 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 6 – a few in monochrome
With a spare hour after a week spent on the road, I made the short trip up the A6 to see what was left of the mill. The answer – everything that was there on my previous visit the week before, nothing had changed. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that in the morning, the sun is behind the…
#321 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 5
Once I’d got the main photos, I tried a few more experimental ones. I like to try to get different perspectives in an attempt to tell a bigger story, and the flexibility of a 14x zoom enabled me to do this easily. These are variations of one I took at Fernhurst Mill a few years back,…
#320 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 4
The view from the north (end) The once monolithic landmark is reduced to a much more compact form. The demolition has been a methodical dismantling, and a relatively neat affair (or at least as neat as deconstructing thousands of tonnes of brick, concrete and other dusty, dirty materials can ever be), and just one section…
#319 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 3
The days of swinging a big iron ball are long gone, demolition these days is more like deconstruction. A long arm excavator with a powerful claw pulls the building apart, and then places all the material for recycling into big piles or straight into trucks. It does make for slow progress though, especially when there is…
#318 – The Last Days of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 2
I grew up in a town full of red brick mills. They were all very similar to New Mill, being very large 4 or 5 storey mills, sometimes in large complexes of two, three, four or even five mills. As the industry shrunk dramatically from the early 60’s onwards, these giants and their chimnies started…
#317 – The Last Days of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 1
New Mill was a massive local landmark, towering over the main street and neat terraced streets of Bamber Bridge. It could also be seen quite prominently from the M6, and was adjacent to the Blackburn – Preston railway line. You really had to try hard not to see it, as it was the tallest building…
Mechanical Landscapes 