tarboat's photos with the keyword: decay

The rotting stumps of the Cawley Nursery on the Top Park at Poynton. This parkland plantation of mainly Beech trees has been a significant landscape feature for decades but now the trees are reaching the end of their life. The loss of this landscape feature is keenly felt by those who have grown up with it. A similar fate is befalling the Round Nursery to the west closer to Towers Yard.

There are records of coal mining at Clintsfield in North Lancashire from the later eighteenth century and there are extensive surface signs of earlier workings to be found nearby. The surviving buildings housed in 1839 a 5 horsepower beam pumping engine and associated boiler and equipment. After the pit finally closed around 1856 the engine house was converted to a dwelling and this ensure its survival, albeit in a decayed condition with just the stump of the chimney remaining. The coal seam worked here never exceeded 2 feet in thickness and the investment in steam pumping equipment can scarcely have been paid for by the likely level of production.

The Hesketh Pit of Chatterley Whitfield colliery forlornly awaits its fate. The shaft was sunk in 1914 although the colliery dates back to 1863. The colliery closed in 1976 and the subsequent mining museum folded in 1993. There seems little hope that funding will ever be found to conserve the structures that are rapidly decaying.

A sign of a caring and efficient local authority is this noticeboard provided by Stockport Council on the Middlewood Way close to Middlewood Station. Clearly maintenance is a high priority with this authority.

Mrs Tarboat and I took a holiday in Whitby and she seemed quite enthusiastic when I suggested a visit to Port Mulgrave. I think she expected a nice fishing village with cream teas and souvenirs. What she got was a stagger down a steep cliff path and a look at a derelict harbour and ironstone mine. Originally known as Rosedale Wyke, ironstone was first worked he around 1855 and shipped out to Jarrow from a wooden jetty. By 1859 a stone harbour had been constructed at a cost of c£50,000 and this was named Port Mulgrave. Stone was shipped from here to the Tyne by 400 ton motorised barges and returning coal ships. Shafts were sunk to seams below sea level and a quarry was worked in the cliffs. Eventually a tunnel was driven into the cliff and a mine opened out. In 1875 the Grinkle Mine was opened further inland and the tunnel entrance was extended through to this new mine. It appears that the Port Mulgrave Mine ceased production in 1881 but stone continued to be brought through the tunnel for shipping until 1917 when Grinkle was connected to the main line railway because of the threat of submarines to coastal shipping. In 1934 the loading machinery was dismantled (some of it caught fire) and the harbour was blown up in World War II to prevent invasion use. Today there is a fine selection of ramshackle fishing huts, a few boats, broken down harbour structures and the tunnel entrance (seen behind the rusty Drott). There were no cream teas and no souvenirs but an interesting hour spent looking at the remains.

Disused copper foundry.

There are records of coal mining at Clintsfield in North Lancashire from the later eighteenth century and there are extensive surface signs of earlier workings to be found nearby. The surviving buildings housed in 1839 a 5 horsepower beam pumping engine and associated boiler and equipment. After the pit finally closed around 1856 the engine house was converted to a dwelling and this ensure its survival, albeit in a decayed condition with just the stump of the chimney remaining. The coal seam worked here never exceeded 2 feet in thickness and the investment in steam pumping equipment can scarcely have been paid for by the likely level of production.

As a site for dereliction it was hard to beat the Cheadle Bleachworks. It seemed as if it would go on decaying until it was all dust. Sadly the owners thought otherwise and the site was finally cleared in late 2007.

Further exploration is precluded by the collapse of the roof of the adit in this Cheshire colliery. This mine worked through a number of adits from the first half of the nineteenth century until final closure in 1925.

The Hesketh Pit of Chatterley Whitfield colliery forlornly awaits its fate. The shaft was sunk in 1914 although the colliery dates back to 1863. It is 32 years since the colliery closed and 15 years since the mining museum closed. There seems little hope that funding will ever be found to conserve the structures that are rapidly decaying.

Disused non-ferrous metal foundry on a winter afternoon.

Slurry tank at an abandoned stone processing works.

Close to the headwaters of the River Dane lies the remains of the adit leading into the Dane Bower Colliery. I would have thought that an entrance that close to the river was just asking to be flooded at some time.

Disused foundry exploration - a view across the loading area.