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…
Tag: Yorkshire
#586 – Steeltown Landscapes 1
I posted a few photos a while back of Rotherham, a South Yorkshire steel town and neighbour to its more celebrated neighbour Sheffield. Britain once had many steel towns but there are relatively few now. The steel industry in Britain was once enormous and employed hundreds of thousands of people, and the economies of many…
#568 – Barnsley Main Colliery 2
The siting of the headgear atop the shafthead building wasn’t unusual, although the backstays are supported by the winding house meaning that no part touches the ground. However, it’s certainly unique in the context of the other remaining headgear in the UK, and made all the more prominent by the demolition of the previous mining…
#567 – Barnsley Main Colliery 1
I first saw Barnsley Main Colliery in (I think) 1994 when I visited Oakwell, the home of Barnsley Football Club for a Division 1 game against my team Bolton Wanderers. It was a wretched, soaking wet day, and the ancient wooden stand we sat in kept us relatively dry compared to the unfortunate souls on…
#559 – Book review – The Last Years of Coal Mining in Yorkshire
In doing some online research for my blog articles I stumbled across a series of books by Steve Grudgings. Two of these cover the last days of the South Wales coalfield, and the other one was this one on Yorkshire. Regrettably, I never got round to photographing the few collieries that remained in Yorkshire until…
#558 – Hatfield Colliery 3
As a black and white photographer, I try to start thinking about how I want the final image to look when I am at the location. As I am shooting digital, the file is a colour file and while I know that you can preview and save JPEG’s as black and white in camera, I…
#557 – Hatfield Colliery 2
My drone now accompanies me if I am going somewhere suitable to fly it, and Hatfield seemed a suitable opportunity to give it a fly. As I’m not using the drone regularly (it’s not my primary camera), I’m still getting my head round how to use the drone in my photography and how to compose…
#527 – Old Negative Scans Part 7 – Albion Mills
I’d forgotten that I’d taken a few shots on film in Albion Mill, so it as nice to see them appear on my screen ftom the scanner. The mill was another empty Yorkshire mill of no particular significance, and it was knocked down a year or so after I had a look. A shame –…
#515 – Cononley Lead Mine 2
A spot of history – the mineral rights to the area were owned by the Duke of Devonshire, and to develop the mine he brought in the famous Cornish mining engineer John Taylor which would doubtless explain the Cornish style design. The engine house is thought to date from about 1840, and housed a beam…
#514 – Cononley Lead Mine 1
The tin mines of Cornwall, or more specifically the beam engine houses are a unique site around the county. The high walled engine houses and the tall chimneys were some of the first mechanised deep mines in the country and a site unique to the south west. Or so I thought……. I was researching mining…
Mechanical Landscapes 