Saint Mary's Whitby HDR

Another HDR image of the wonderfully eclectic Saint Mary's Parish Church Whitby Yorkshire UK.

Here are more of my images of the church

More images of Whitby

More HDR images

Andy Marshall is a professional architectural photographer. Most images can be downloaded 24/7 at Alamy

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Tadao Ando Screen Piccadilly Manchester UK

Andy Marshall is a professional architectural photographer. Most images can be downloaded 24/7 at Alamy

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More HDR

Here's another HDR image taken from the portico at Tatton Park in Cheshire UK. This image exemplifies just what I like about this process with the full tonal range and colour saturation. I particularly like the way it brings out the patina of the stone columns.

More HDR ....

Andy Marshall is a professional architectural photographer. Most images can be downloaded 24/7 at Alamy

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York Grotesque

This grotesque is carved upon a modern seat in the Minster Close showing the continuation of traditional themes and craftmanship

Andy Marshall is a professional architectural photographer. Most images can be downloaded 24/7 at Alamy

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Sundial, Tatton Park Cheshire UK

Screen Manchester Piccadilly by Tadao Ando

You can buy this image at Alamy

All Tadao Ando images

The Lodge at Four Acre

How about this for an archaeological profile? This must be an archaeologists dream with the full section exposed and not much digging to do!

This is an eroded section of the lodge bank at Four Acre Mill in the Cheesden Valley Heywood near Lancashire. It is adjacent to the outlet where the water would have driven the water wheel at the Mill situated a matter of yards lower down. The lodge was built before 1810 for the mill which started its life carding and spinning wool. Remains still exist of the mill amounting to a low rubble wall and much scattered debris. A hole which I think might come from the tail race in the bank below is taken up by a fox or badger.

In the photo above you can see the full outline of the lodge and the indentation where water would have collected to power the waterwheel.

The valley is full of the signs of mans endeavours to utilise the landscape to help him prosper. It was only recently that I noticed a whole range of ridge and furrow around the area known as Tom Hill.

I am currently carrying out a project to photograph the Cheesden Valley and it has its own separate blog.

There is a Google Earth map of the valley which I have created. You can download it at my archi-maps page here.

The Lodge at Mr John's

Here are the remains of the lodge used to drive the mill at Cheesden Lumb Higher (affectionately known by contemporaries as Mr John's). The lodge isn't so easy to see during the summer and the snow helps add a little relief to see the contours. It lies empty now, but I imagine it would be treacherous to try and walk into the centre. In the south east corner lumps and bumps reveal the site of the mill. Directly to the south a wall stands with holes inserted at regular intervals where the rafters would have been lodged to support the floor.

Andy Marshall is part way through a project to photograph the sites of the Cheesden Valley near Heywood Lancashire UK

Lumps and Bumps

A light dusting of snow over the North Pennine Moors (near Heywood Lancashire UK) revealed extensive marks which look like ridge and furrow. What date they are from is difficult to say and whether they have been ploughed or produced for drainage is also difficult to say. I have looked on Google Earth and several field systems of ridge and furrow are visible crashing into each other at various angles to the south of Tom Hill between Cheesden Pasture and Cheesden Fold. Some respect the current field boundaries and some do not. Below are some pics I took on Saturday.

Below is a picture of Tom Hill which is covered in ridge and furrow. Ridge and furrow to the west are cut into by Victorian ventilation shafts showing that they pre-date this period. There is an unusual irregularity as to their positioning and pattern.

All over the area there are derelict farms and barns - the footprints now only survive. It would be fascinating to find out about the history of this area and how the landscape has developed. I'm sure it would add to an area which is poorly documented.

Interestingly, on the Google Earth map there is just visible beneath the pattern of one furrowed field a series of rectangular marks (enclosure?) which possibly predate the ridge and furrows themselves. They lie on the south slope of Tom Hill. I have marked the area on my google earth archi-map (Cheesden Valley) and you can see them for yourself if you download the map here.

Tom Hill from the South West

Cheesden Pasture Ridge and Furrow

On Monday I talked about how our landscape has been changed by man over thousands of years; and noted that during a walk on Cheesden Pasture near Heywood Lancs UK that along the side of one of the ridges there magically appeared a series of ridge and furrow.

This was whilst the sun was setting and they disappeared after a few minutes. They're completely invisible to the eye most of the time. Anyway I took a hurried and shaky hip shot with the zoom lens and here they are - click the pic for larger view.

The Making of the English Landscape

Would it be sad to say that one of my 'comfort' books is 'The Making of the English Landscape' by W G Hoskins. I think I read in the flyer that one critic said that it was rare that a single book comes along and heightens your consciousness of your surroundings. That's why every now and then I have to dip back into it to bring me back to that ethereal state of awareness - or else I'm in danger of being numbed by the effects of today's busy and stressful lifestyle.

I think the book was originally written in the 1950's but it is still revolutionary in its outlook - with its main tenet that even the wildest moors of Britain have been shaped by the hand of man. Even more remarkable is the fact that with a little insight you can still see the marks that our ancestors left over 10,000 years ago.

Boundaries are one of the most lasting features in our landscape, as are some field systems.

The photo above of Cheesden Pasture in Heywood Lancs shows a largely rural scene which most would expect to be completely natural. But we have a field boundary of stone; a cultivated pasture to the right; a tree (which is at the base of the ruins of a house and probably planted by man); just off photo, some larger humps and bumps were created in the late C18th and early C19th when water was diverted to a lodge to run a water powered mill. On the side of the hill in the background there survives a series of ridge and furrows which are only visible when the sun is low (from what period I don't have a clue). The main ridge in the photo leads to a hill which has had human activity for thousands of years with stone age flints being found (possibly a place of ritual) Nearby across the Edenfield Road we have a bronze age burial site which lifts the field boundary aloft like the dip of a roller coaster. Only a matter of yards away the head of a bronze age axe was found during excavations for a reservoir.

Indeed it wouldn't surprise me to find out that this area of North Pennine Moors was teaming with life several thousand years ago and that the location of my home town would have been no more than a clearing swamped and surrounded by trees.

ARCHIPEDIA - L is for....

Lych Gate - found at the entrance to many Churches - the Lych Gate had a traditional role as a dry place to hold the coffin whilst waiting for the Vicar to arrive.

Farmstead

The farms around the North Pennine Moors in the north of England are almost prairie like and the vast haunch of of moss gnarled sandstone coal measures adds an epic quality to the landscape.

I was up there last Sunday to witness this spectacular sunset and take my wife and daughter for a walk up to a small hamlet called Fecit via the Cheesden Pasture; where I told them stories of the ardent activities of the mill operatives who traversed the stark setting every morning to sit at the loom and stare out of the window at the farm on the horizon silhouetted against the ochre sky.

Archi-Maps Update

There's a lot been happening with my archi-maps project recently. The maps include photographs and links to relevant information. To use the archi-maps you need to have the free Google Earth installed. If you haven't seen Google Earth you'll wonder why you ever did without it. To get into Google Earth there's a great blog here. To download any of the maps go to my archi-map page : buildings are being added regularly so use the update feature on the page to keep up to date.

Manchester, UK archi-map

Manchester was the industrial hothouse of England during the Industrial Revolution and is now at the forefront of urban design with new structures by world renowned architects such as Calatrava and Ando.

More buildings have been added to my Manchester archi-map , the latest being the Victoria Bridge near the Cathedral. All buildings have been placed in relevant timeline folders so that you can view, for example, just buildings of the C19th etc.

Cheesden Valley, UK archi- map

Cheesden Valley with all mill locations and other features courtesy of Google Earth

The Cheesden Valley is, in my opinion worthy of World Heritage Status, it is a little known valley which witnessed the early stages of the industrial revolution (more here)

If you want to immerse yourself into the English early C19th then the Cheesden Valley archi-map is for you. Go to my Cheesden Valley blogspot and learn about the mills whilst you have the archi-map up and running. Ramp up your ELEVATION EXAGGERATION to the max (3) in 'Tools' /'Options and you will be able to fly through the valley and over the mills. Make sure you switch 'Terrain' on. I am updating each mill with a photo and data file - the latest addition being Cheesden Lumb Lower - the archaeological remains of a water powered mill dating from the C18th.

Medieval Lavenham

If the C19th is not your bag and you prefer your medieval to mills and Manchester then put your cod piece on and get on down to Lavenham, Suffolk. Here we have a significant number of historic timber framed buildings with some archaeological and architectural features noted, including a potential archaeological site - do you know what it might be? Check out the red alert symbol on the map.

That concludes the update, more maps will be added shortly. Please make a comment if you find them useful.

Touched by the hand of God

Light over Cheesden Pasture from Four Acres Lodge by Andy Marshall

Touched by the hand of God it might be, but the communities which lived in this location 200 years ago might not have been aware of such stark beauty.

I have learnt such a lot about the people of the Cheesden Valley through the many years I have trudged up and down with camera and tripod. My first perception was of a valley full of industry in a state of perpetual lavaic flux, amidst the volcanic explosion of the industrial revolution which had its epicentre only 10 miles away in the dark and satanic murk of Manchester.

Yet, the photographic process has allowed a slow absorption of the lichen clad stone and rusted lodge pipes, which in turn has helped me recognise the intangible links between each mill and the community which built them.

This valley was no typical conglomeration of manufactories. The activitiy and culture which grew up in this valley over 200 years ago lies on the cusp of the industrial revolution, it hangs onto the large hunk of urbanisation by a sinew. It is a distant cousin, a transitional phase between the medieval workshop and the multi-disciplinary factory.

The 15 or so mills built along the full length of the valley with disparate roles such as bleaching and fulling are the conduits of a community isolated from the industrial mammon by the deep cut and thrust of the valleys of the North Pennine Moors. There is something noble about their activities: to organise and produce a loose conglomerate of structures, which in many ways complemented each other, and provided the answer to much of the cotton process from spinning to bleaching and finishing.

P. S. Barnwell sums it up intuitively in his text entitled 'Workshops, industrial production and the landscape' : "...unless production was concentrated in a single workshop or manufactory, articles had to be moved, often many times, from one workshop to another during the course of manufacture. For this to be economically sustainable required a density of businesses within a restricted area, so that the network of interdependent workshops created a kind of dispersed factory, with specialist workers working like a dispersed machine. The result was the creation of tight-knit communities with a sense of common purpose, fate and identity, living in areas dominated by the buildings, often individually undistinguished, of the local trade: the mass of such buildings often transformed the local landscape and , where they still exist, create a dominant sense of local distinctiveness" (Taken from 'The Vernacular Workshop - from craft to industry, 1400-1900' CBA 2004)

The Cheesden Valley in a nutshell.

Cheesden Valley Google Earth Archi-Map

All of my images of the Cheesden Valley

Four Acres

Walked up to the site of Four Acres Mill today with my son Sam who is here stood on the southern rampart of the mill lodge which was built several feet above the mill to provide the pressure to drive the water wheel. The wheel pit still remains, although much filled in with stone. At the site of the exit for the water from the pit (now much covered) there is a singular hole now occupied by a fox or badger.

In the photo, behind the tree you can see the spurs of the banks of the Cheesden Brook which sidles its way down the moors.

You can view the archi-map with four acres mill highlighted here.

Cheesden Valley Project

Cheesden Archi-Map

For those who have been wondering what I have been going on about over the last few blogs - heres a Cheesden Valley Archi-Map to check out the mills of the valley. The mills developed in rough chronological order, from north to south.

Try tilting the google earth map to see the terrains lumps and bumps (check the terrain radio button to have this work). You can boost the terrain bumps by going to Google Earth Options and increasing the elevation exaggeration to 3. This way you can fly through the valley in 3d and see the mill locations. I am updating each location with detailed information. Just the washwheel mill is ready (look for the 'i' symbol)

Also have added a data-sheet about the Washwheel Mill on my Cheesden Valley blog.

Below the bridge at Cheesden

No, there wasn't a troll but there is a spirit of kinds - the spirit of mans endeavours and of civilisation lost. Not a soul in site - look into the distance and you can see 2k's worth of camera equipment left out in the open - just how isolated this location is.

Remember 'Planet of the Apes' - at the very end (or was it at the beginning?) when the man turns up at the beach and sees the Statue of Liberty derelict on the floor? Just what I felt like during the soggy hour I spent yesterday, beneath the crumbling C19th pack horse bridge.

See the carved and patterned coping? Testament to what our forbears thought of their utilitarian and industrial environment. Kudos to them eh?

BEHIND THE PHOTO....

This was taken during a high period of optimism for Manchester UK - during the Commonwealth Games. I wasn't poaching - I had just completed shooting a building nearby and was having a sandwich minding my own business. Suddenly the sun came out and the rainbow appeared. I waited for the Children to run across. They do look as though they are jumping over the rainbow. It was taken with a Bronica ETRSI, 40mm lens on fuji velvia film.