I’m not sure if you’re allowed in without a booking for one of the rides, but I thought I’d chance my arm – you don’t get if you don’t ask. The lovely girl on the desk was slightly perplexed by my request but agreed that I could go in as long as I stayed in…
Tag: Coal Mine
#641 – South Wales Road Trip Part 9 – Cefn Coed Colliery
The primary reason for my Wales trip was to photograph the remaining mines for my typology and I have opted to photograph them all from the same side on perspective. This is easier said than done, and not all of the remaining headgears can be photographed side on, but I was going to do my…
#640 – South Wales Road Trip Part 8 Cefn Coed Colliery
Cefn Coed was on my list of places to see on my original, cancelled trip in 2021 but at that time one or both of the headgears were being rebuilt and in pieces. So I suppose one of the benefits of postponing was the ability to see both in a fully restored condition, and they…
#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…
#635 – South Wales Road Trip Part 3 – Penallta
I’d seen a few photographs online of the upcast headgear, viewed through the downcast headgear structure. My plan was to try and hold my camera over the fence and photograph this through the legs to see if I could get a usable photograph for the typology but I wasn’t expecting much. As I ended up…
#634 – South Wales Road Trip Part 2 – Penallta
Pennalta Colliery was my first planned port of call on my South Wales road trip. My plan was primarily to get a photo for my headgear typology and then get some from the adjacent housing estate that has recently been built on part of the site. I’d done some research on the internet to get…
#633 – South Wales Road Trip Part 1 – Hafodyrynys
This bizarre contrivance is a slime thickener, which was part of a coal washery, the only remaining part of the former Hafodyrynys colliery. A colliery had been in operation at Hafodyrynys in the 1870’s, and another opened in 1914 which operated until the 1950’s. The old shafts were closed and three drifts were sunk, with…
#608 – Lancashire Rural Industry 2 – Hill Top Colliery
I’ve written before about Lancashire’s coalfield so my few regular readers will have to excuse the brief recap. While not as big or as long lasting as Yorkshire’s or Nottinghamshire’s, it was certainly one of the main mining areas earlier in the 20th century and extraction was concentrated around south Lancashire in a belt that…
#605 – Woodhorn Colliery
One of my current long term projects is photographing the remaining mining headgear / headstocks in the UK, and displaying these in a ‘typlogy’ format à la Bernd and Hilla Becher. I’d only managed to visit two sites this year – the unusual clad structure at Meadowbank Mine in Winsford, and the two at Snibston…
#594 – A Refreshed Typology
So with the photograph of one of the Snibston headstocks available for inclusion, I took the opportunity to refresh the typology and add in Grove Rake and Magpie Mine that I’d not included before. Grove Rake I took back in 2016, long before this project was conceived and so isn’t optimal really, but until I…
Mechanical Landscapes 