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…
Tag: Textile Mill
#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 –…
#617 – Lees Brook Mill 3 – notes on composition and creativity
It’s a few months since I posted about this place, and my attention has been elsewhere this year, so I’d forgotten that I’d started to write this! As I mentioned in the initial post, the catalyst for this visit was seeing this post on Instagram, and although I’d seen the mill when driving in the…
#615 – Lees Brook Mill 2 – Reflections and other perspectives
Legend has it that Oldham once had over 360 mills chimneys – ‘one for every day of the year’ which meant that it had at least as many mills. Indeed, Oldham was the centre of the world when it came to cotton production – in 1913, 10% of the world’s production came from Oldham and…
#614 – Lees Brook Mill 1 – getting going again and a new camera
I didn’t do much by way of industrial photography in 2022. I’d organised a 3 day trip to south wales in March to photograph a number of places for my ongoing coal and steel projects but then caught Covid on the day I was travelling and had to cancel all my arrangements. After that, other…
#607 – Lancashire Rural Industry 1 – Cheesden Lumb Mill
This mill had been on my list of places to look at for many years, but it’s one of those places that is not going to be demolished (although it could just fall down of it’s own volition, I suppose) so has never been a priority to visit. This is another one of those long…
#599 – The Art of the Panorama Part 3 – Mills and Mining
Unlike the steel industry with its vast landscapes, the mills and mines I’ve photographed are for the most part more compact, more upright. At one time when the cotton mills were the dominant features of the urban landscape of the northern mill town, it was possible to make panoramas of these dozens of mills and…
Mechanical Landscapes 