If you turn right when you leave the Barony A Frame, and drive less than 5 minutes down Barony Road, you will find the Highhouse colliery headgear tucked away in the corner of a small industrial estate in Auchinleck. It’s not in great condition and it’s one of the smaller headgears I’ve seen, probably a…
Tag: Coal Mine
#664 – Barony A-Frame 2
The A-frame is apparently 180 feet high, and it’s certainly a big old thing. But with the demolition of the car hall underneath it it looks weirdly top heavy, almost alien like. So I’ve decided to accentuate this by using a 14-30 lens. The view from underneath is unusual to say the least. I’ve taken…
#663 – Barony A-Frame 1
Barony Colliery, to the west of Auchinleck in Ayrshire was the last of the pits in the west of Scotland to close. It consisted of a number of shafts, although 1 and 2 were closed in the 1960’s, but all that survives is the headgear of No.3 shaft, more commonly known as the Barony A-Frame….
#654 – Clipstone Colliery Revisit Part 2
There were three main areas visited – the winding engine hall, the adjacent power house and the heapstead under the upcast. The winding engine hall is now used as an events venue and has a large collection of mining memorabilia which was interesting but not what I wanted to photograph. The power house was more…
#653 – Clipstone Colliery Revisit Part 1
I’d last visited Clipstone Colliery in March 2009, not long after the site had been cleared, leaving just the magnificent grade 2 listed headstocks and power house standing alone in a recently graded field. In fact there were still piles of rubble round the back and the fence had not been erected around the buildings….
#652 – Clipstone Colliery 2009
These are some photographs that I’ve never published on this blog, although if you follow me on social media you will have seen them, and the colour versions appear on theviewfromthenorth.org. I visited here in 2009, and the site had just been cleared of all the surface buildings. All that was left was the grade…
#651 – Pleasley Colliery Revisit
I first visited both Clipstone and Pleasley Colliery on the same day in March 2009 and while Clipstone was my priority this time I thought I’d pay a quick visit to Pleasley as it was only 25 minutes away. Back in 2009 I was years away from starting my headgear typology but while I had…
#645 South Wales Road Trip Part 13 – Big Pit
Big Pit was my last port of call as it was the most easterly pit and therefore – technically – on the way home. It’s the home of the Welsh Mining Museum so like all museums is free to enter, but they do charge £5 to park so regard that as an entry fee of…
#644 – South Wales Road Trip Part 12 – Lewis Merthyr
Unlike Cefn Coed, the colliery museum at Lewis Merthyr remains open. Mine was a flying visit and I didn’t have time for the guided tour round the buildings as I wanted to look at a photographic exhibition that was being held there as well so I had to balance the time I had between making…
#643 – South Wales Road Trip Part 11 – Great Western Colliery
This was a brief stop. The site wasn’t open and a small sign on the gate said it open Sundays 2-4 so I was 24 hours too early and I planned to be on the way home when it was open, so I just had a look from the pavement. And that’s quite easy to…
Mechanical Landscapes 