Just up the Bridgewater canal from Butts Mill are Mather Lane Mills, a small complex of mills that straddled both sides of the canal. Wikipedia tells me that it was built in 1882 and the Bolton architects of Bradshaw, Gass and Hope were responsible for the design, as they were of many Lancashire mills. In…
Tag: Industrial Landscape
#622 – Butts Mill, Leigh 3
My last photo of the front of the mill was taken from further away than the ones in my last post, but made a feature of the corner markings. I’ve processed all the photos the same way, making the grass really dark and ‘muddy’, and bringing out the whites of the field markings. It was…
#621 – Butts Mill, Leigh 2
Butts Mill sits opposite Dootsons Park Playing Fields, and a game of youth football had just finished when I got there. This was a shame as it would have been nice to have got some players in the frame when I photographed the mill, but I think an empty pitch works equally well. I decided…
#620 – Butts Mill, Leigh 1
I stumbled across this place a few years ago when I was driving past and didn’t have a camera with me, and it’s taken me a long time to go back to take a closer look. It’s an impressive place and, well the Historic England listing describes it better than I ever could: “Cotton spinning…
#619 – Higher Walton Mill 2
I wanted to take some alternative views of the mill but struggled to find a perspective I liked as not only is the mill set back from the road, it’s at an angle to it as well as below the road level. The perimeter fence did catch my eye though. It’s not something I’d normally…
#618 – Higher Walton Mill 1
Like many Lancashire towns, Preston once had dozens of cotton mills, but very few have survived. There are of course a couple of significant exceptions, with the refurbished Hesketh Mill on New Hall Lane being something of a landmark as you approach the city centre, and the gigantic Tulketh Mill – complete with chimney –…
#587 – Steeltown Landscapes 2
Unlike the sprawling, overwhelmingly oppressive landscape of the steelworks at Scunthorpe with its acres of cooling towers, blast furnaces, coke ovens, conveyers and other artefacts of industry, the visual landscape of the Aldwarke steelworks in Rotherham is more generically industrial. Like Scunthorpe, it’s not easy to photograph from directly outside, you have to go on…
#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…
#403 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 3
Winding engine (I think) in one of the sheds. Just a few more random ones from the visit. It was good to have some expert accompaniment on the visit, so thanks again to Iain Robinson for spending a good part of the day with me as he’s very knowledgeable on the local quarry industry and…
#402 – Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Part 2
While I’m not a frequent visitor to North Wales, I have visited at least annually over the past ten years, and had experienced only one sunny day in that time. So I was pleasantly surprised to experience the area when it wasn’t smothered in cloud, fog and rain. Photographically, this represented a departure from me for two…
Mechanical Landscapes 