Norton sandstone quarry - perhaps the oldest quarry in Runcorn. Quarried stone was used here in much of the construction of parts of Norton Priory in the 1300's. It's last use was probably in the 1800's when it would've contributed to some extent in the building of Norton water tower, but even by then it was listed on maps as the 'old quarry' and would have been left to the elements in the decades before the priory's estate began to diminish. It lies to the base of a small hill at the south east of Norton priory estate known as Windmill hill, so was often referred to locally by the same name.
The heritage of many British villages often comes to be defined through the centuries by the house of one particular family. None more so than at Moreton Corbet in Shropshire, England. Here at St Bartholomew Chapel, the nave and chancel originated in the late Norman period, and there is infact a list of rectors of this church unbroken since the year 1300, proving that christians have been worshipping here for more than 700 years. To think I have visited churches to have lasted just a fraction of that time that are now merely crumbled and overgrown ruins makes the achievement of keeping this place so ornate even more impressive. Much of its preservation has been down to its continued links to the Corbet family of the surrounding estate, with chest tombs of members of the family still dominating much of the interior. Over more than six centuries their power and wealth was inflicted upon the chapel in the form of extravagantly personal interior donations and upgrades. A shining golden canopy above the central stained glass window of St Bartholomew himself boasts a canopy of heraldic shields, and in the 1700's a squire's pew" was added - this three-sided room off the south aisle had a fireplace to keep the grandees warm, with cushions and curtains which they could pull across so that they wouldn't have to gaze upon/smell the commoners of the village - typical of behaviour within the classes of rural religious communities for many centuries. Extravagance such as this has resulted in an interior that would rival that of any surviving example around the world, no doubt earning its prestigious Grade I listing as a scheduled monument, becoming something of a museum for a family who still own the castle that defines the landscape of this village despite standing in ruin since since the 18th century. This small but brilliantly preserved corner of the country is a true example of the very best of English Heritage's work and why it's so important to support their efforts through the generations.
At this rate, this could become the first of many 'local' then & now's as we all continue to adhere to lockdown rules. Luckily for me, I live in an area absolutely steeped in history and I'll be the first to admit to having overlooked much of it in recent years. Crescent Row, Runcorn Old Town. Original photo presumed around 1890. This is the only one to survive of three rows of dwellings built by the 1st Duke of Bridgewater for workers on his groundbreaking canal at a time when it passed by here under the Waterloo & railway bridges towards top locks eventually reaching the river Mersey. It seems as though the row once housed several families all linked to the keeping of the infamous ten lock flight, but now exists as just two homes. The owner of the furthest from the camera tells me how he is the third generation to live there, and how much change it has witnessed in the town centre through the years.
The cutting shed at Dinorwic slate quarry in North West Wales. Probably the best surviving example of its time, the equipment has been left to the forces of nature on the higher levels of the quarry for half a century since this mammoth site closed. Slabs the size of men would be transported here by the quarry's own railway to be split into thin segments by hand before being trimmed by rows of circular saws. Put into batches, it would be sent down to the lower levels and transported across the country ready for use, at a time when it was still recognised as the most durable roofing material in the world before cheaper alternatives entered the market. Work here only ever stopped for lack of daylight, and the men were paid very little despite the dangers of their work. It truly is one of the most fascinating places to walk through
1877-2018. Plas Gwynfryn, North Wales. Once a grand country home, the building was also a wartime hospital, an orphanage and a hotel throughout its history. Sitting within extensive parkland, it has now been derelict since 1982 but efforts to restore the building have stopped and started ever since. Concerned that the full set of 40 original drawings (see 2nd & 3rd photos) which date from 1875 when the house was rebuilt, could've been split up and lost unless they were purchased, led to a promising outlook in 2018 when a local property developer we met on site made it their goal to retrieve the drawings and take on the mammoth task of restoration. However, with the last owner believed to be abroad unable to be traced, and the drawings seemingly impossible to retrieve in their entirety, the task of gaining planning permission became nigh on impossible. The project was no longer feasible and the property was back on the market as of last year. Bad luck just seems to surround this mysterious place.. during the early 1980s, while under its last hopeful redevelopment, the house mysteriously caught fire and was gutted. Superstitious people might say that it simply doesn't want to be saved, but while there's walls, there's hope.
As the country grinds to a halt, sadly this hobby has to take a step back for now, but every cloud has a silver lining - maybe now I'll finally be able to work through my archive which is now more than two years behind. For so long now, my spare time has been spent documenting these wonderful forgotten places around the UK. So much so that I've travelled far more often than I've sat down to edit. There are so many locations with history and stories that I have never shown and photographs even I have forgotten about just waiting to be uncovered. Isolation provides the perfect opportunity to finally show them to you - perhaps now at a time when all of Britain is unseen, this website might find a new purpose in reminding us what lies silent in our absence. Stay safe. Stay home, and watch this space.
The ruins of Abereiddy slate quarry sit on the northern edge of Pembrokeshire in South Wales. One of more than a hundred quarries in the county that operated in the late 18th century, slate that was extracted from Abereiddy was transported by tramway to the neighbouring Porthgain Habour and shipped out to sea. The quarry itself was active until the early 20th century and later abandoned and deliberately flooded when the channel connecting the quarry to the sea was blasted using explosives, allowing the sea to flood in. Ruined quarry buildings still sit on the clifftop, including Abereiddy tower which is one of the oldest structures believed to be late 17th century and is thought to have been built as a lookout beacon for ships using St George's channel.
What's left of ICI Randle - a highly contaminated ex-mustard gas works that sits in an unfortunate position inbetween the Manchester ship canal and River Mersey that was directly linked to Rhydymwyn valley works in North Wales. Despite being used for chemical landfil since the war, decontamination & demolition has been a slow process here since it closed in the 1960's/1970's but the site will likely be unusable for generations to come. An eerie place with not much left but a single storage bunker (with one mysterious steel door blocked shut by a five tonne trailer) and a lone asbestos-riddled building that have both somehow survived the decades of disuse.
“It was called the Hush Hush on Wigg Island. They made the mustard gas there during the war. Me mam used to work there for a bit. It was secret what they were doing, that’s why you couldn’t talk about it. I think they were making bombs in case the Nazis invaded.”
Dot, 78, local resident
Status report:
During the period 1939 to 1945 ICI (1996) indicate that it is believed a number of „Ministry of Defence‟ Classified projects were carried out on the site. Although ICI records of wartime arrangements with the MoD have been destroyed or are not free for examination (ICI, 1996), limited details are available with respect to the “Tube Alloy Project”, which involved early development work for atomic energy and the atomic bomb.
5.12.75 ICI note that „war gases were developed and manufactured throughout the Second World War‟. ICI was the Governments largest industrial agent and the largest investment of all was in the research, development and manufacture of war gases.
The darts champions dormer bungalow. A small home in a quiet village in Lancashire filled with trophies and artefacts leaving clues to the passionate hobby of its former owner. Most likely left behind some time in the 1990's as there was barely anything modern to be found.
The old packhorse bridge at lumb hole falls, a waterfall surrounded by woodland along crimsworth dean beack in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. More than a few centuries ago this narrow, age-old route that crosses the falls, known as 'Sunny Bank Road' would have been a main passage for horses & carriages travelling to and from the mills that were once scattered across these valleys. Since their closure barely anything has changed here and beauty spots like this all over Yorkshire have effectively been untouched by the modern world. You can sit back and choose a year to imagine you're in, and disappear for a moment or two.
The scrounged remains of the central fuselage behind the cockpit of an Avro Shackleton. Developed in response to the post-war expansion of the Soviet navy, of the 185 that were built since the late 1940's only one airborne example now survives. This particular model drew the short straw and has slowly been stripped for parts to help restore other models on display in museums across the world. The aircraft were used primarily in anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft roles, and occasionally as an aerial search and rescue platform. This section would have been the most integral part of the Shackleton's operation - on the left would once have been state of the art radar equipment with two men manning the devices, and on the right would have been two navigators alongside the sonobuoy operator who was responsible for the expendable sonar system that was dropped/ejected from aircraft whilst conducting anti-submarine warfare or underwater acoustic research.
It was replaced by jet powered alternatives during the peak of the cold war and its numbers have slowly diminished ever since, along with the Avro brand itself that now only exists in memory. Soon this whole airfield is set to be new housing, leaving this battered old girl with an uncertain future.
1935-2018. Cliffe Park Hall, original photograph taken two years after the hall had officially opened as a youth hostel, 124 years after its construction as a private manor. Despite it's glory days having well and truly passed, it continued to serve as a hostel until the late 60's when it returned to private ownership and fell into steady decline. Only in the past decade have new owners acquired the site with the hope of restoring its former grandeur. Good luck to them!
The ruin of Capel Lligwy dates back to the first half of the 12th century - a time when many churches on Anglesey in north-west Wales were first built in stone following the end of Viking raids and attempts by the Normans to gain control of the island. Due to its isolation at the time and lack of Welsh records the reason for its construction, and the saint to whom it was dedicated, are shrouded in mystery. Historians suggest that it may originally have been a memorial chapel, or connected to a royal court nearby. What we do know is that for a time Capel Lligwy was used as a private place of worship for Lligwy House, a "venerable mansion" which disappeared in the late 18th century. The chapel has slowly fallen into ruin ever since, and is now a lonely medieval relic used by sheep as a glorified shelter from the weather.
The last surviving telephone switchboard inside an otherwise empty office building in an industrial region near Chester. Manual switchboards required the operator (almost always a woman due to certain training schemes) to oversee call connections which would be automatically answered immediately as they inserted the answering cord, and ringing would begin as soon as the operator inserted the ringing cord into the called party's jack. Once the call had ended, the operator would be disconnected from the circuit, allowing her to handle another call on that line. Telephone exchanges were once bustling high rise offices with staff often having to sport roller skates in order to traverse them quickly enough to provide a timely service. My Grandma worked on one of these switchboards in her younger years so it was nice to get to see one of these relics left behind and realise what it once took to make what we now perceive as something so primitive. The majority of these exchanges became obsolete after converting to automatic systems beginning in the 1970's.
One of the sad losses of 2019. RAF Calveley airfield control tower. Up until now this was the most complete World War 2 airfield in my home county of Cheshire, and the only one with a surviving 'Watch Office'. Despite this, it hadn't recieved much credit in the seven decades that followed the war, and was used as a glorified farmers shed for the last of its days. Earlier this year once I heard the distribution centre that already ate up the North side of the former airstrip was due to expand imminently I dropped all other plans to make sure I got to see it before it was gone. After being too young to explore the remnants of my local WW2 airfield at RAF Burtonwood before it was erased from the map, I'm glad to be able to say I got to see this one before it too was flattened a few months after my visit. Unfortunately barely any of these iconic towers manage to gain listed status, and the farmer wasn't entirely sure why I was so bothered about seeing it, which maybe explains why he didn't have a problem selling off the land in the first place.
Parys Mountain pit head. A copper mine that has been worked for ore as far back as the bronze age 4000 years ago. At its height in the late 18th century it dominated the world market, its copper used to sheath British admiralty's wooden ships of war, and even replaced a national shortage of small coin due to its worth. Small scale excavations such as this one have been made since it closed around 100 years ago, but were cut short after the most recent economic crash which sent metal prices tumbling. Even now its doors and machinery remained padlocked in the hope of resurrection.
Gigantic 50ft high 'blowing out towers' left behind at a disused bromine facility on the Welsh coastline. Sea water would be sucked in, treated with chemicals and then the resulting bromine solution quite literally 'blown' out of the water using this high pressure system which would churn in 22,000 tonnes of water in order to produce just 1 tonne of bromine. Despite clean sea water returning at the end of the process, the site was plagued with well-publicised pollution issues linked to the surrounding area, and when the site was decommissioned around 15 years ago it took the best part of a year to decontaminate. Only the bulkiest parts, around a quarter of the original structures now survive whilst the site awaits a new purpose.
1911-2018. John Summers & Sons headquarters, on the banks of the River Dee in Flintshire. Once the center of one of the biggest steelworks in the world employing more than 10,000 people, it was brought down like many by the ill fated British steel corporation. The only part of the works to gain listed status, it survived demolition and has stood silent now for four decades. Last year it was put on a top 10 list of endangered buildings by the Victorian Society, and since then talks have began in order to bring it back to life on behalf of Enbarr community foundation who have managed to sign over the redundant building. They've got a mammoth task on their hands, but fingers crossed they can get it done before it's too late.
1937-2018. The Gaumont theatre, Liverpool. Aptly named due to having housed Britain’s first Gaumont projectomatic system which led the way for modern cinema at the time. With 1,500-seats the theatre was built to replace the Dingle Picturedrome, and operated until 1966 when single screen cinemas essentially became outdated overnight. It has been derelict now for just over two decades, and with the building not being listed, the only reason it's survived this long is the fact that mobile phone operators continue to use the old projector room and have masts on the roof, whilst the curved exterior wall shines billboard adverts at drivers heading into the city. Not an entirely dignified existence by any means.
Hightown cornmill - a fascinating little Jacobean building that still sits amongst the trees and the same flowing brook in rural Cheshire that it has done for more than 400 years. Built around 1616 originally as a cornmill during the construction of Dunham Massey, it was central to the design by Sir George Booth which saw the estate strive towards being almost entirely self-sufficient by working off the surrounding land. It later found new purpose as a sawmill before shutting down when the estate began to diminish. Fortunately it was never allowed to crumble into disrepair, and whilst it is no longer in industrial use, it was restored and much of the machinery re-constructed around 1980 including a fully working waterwheel. Allowing passers-by to experience one of Britain’s last remaining examples of a functioning seventeenth century watermill.
