The Ghosts of Industry Past

  Very last minute my wife decided to go to London for a close friends hen meal, suddenly leaving me with a whole day free to entertain myself.  I had a few errands to run including picking up a parcel about twenty minutes drive away.  So I packed up the car and put in a camera and some film just in case and started driving.  Whilst trundling along strumming my fingers lightly on the steering wheel in time to the CD playing through the car speakers I suddenly realised that directly en-route to the parcel depot was an abandoned mill I had been meaning to visit for some time!  Upon arrival at the depot I hastily rummaged through my bags to see if I had packed some black and white film and my light meter.  Thank goodness i had!  So off i went in search of a road leading to the mill.

After a bit of searching (both on-road and on-line) I pulled up outside.  Not wanting to cause suspicion I parked a little further down the road and walked up.  The mill was surrounded by a large fence but fortunately at one point someone had cut a gaping hole into it which I could just walk through.

  I tend to get a little on edge when going to places like this.  Both of  locals seeing me and thinking i'm up to no good and so calling the police, or delinquents who hang around these kinds of places causing mischief.  But fortunately I ran into neither.  I rather fancied trying to get inside but couldn't see any obvious way in so and I didn't want to do any climbing as i was wearing my favorite jeans.  So I decided to just keep outside and see what i could find to shoot.  Fortunately an abandoned shopping trolley proved a worthy subject, as did a traffic barrier which is strange really as I only shot it to finish off the roll of film.

  As i was developing the negatives i was really hoping they would come out ok.  Fortunately my Diana camera didn't let me down and I got some shots that i'm really happy with.