tarboat's photos

Cowdale Quarry was opened by the New Buxton Lime Co c1901. The company was taken over by the Buxton Lime Firms in 1908 and shortly afterwards a bank of limekilns and a range of other buildings were constructed in concrete. The quarry and works closed in 1956 but most of the concrete structures remained. This is the entrance to the powerhouse with the Buxton Lime Firms initials and construction date of 1909. If you look closely you can see that the initials of the then manager Thomas Ryan that were underneath the date have been removed after he left to join a rival firm. In a typical example of deceit and local authority incompetence this listed building was demolished after a developer applied for a section 80 demolition order on the basis that it was in a dangerous condition. The department that issues such orders did not, of course, consult with the planning department and the result was that this fine structure was unneccessarily lost. Permission to develop the site was refused. The lack of joined-up thinking and operating in local authorities is unacceptable.

Manhole cover at Kingsbury.

Manhole cover at Hopwas.

Tamworth has a forest of tower blocks watching over the Tame valley.

SY1685 at speed as it brings the empties back from the Xinhua power station on the Hegang Coal Railway. It may have been April but it had been snowing a short time earlier.

There is a trend towards commemorating collieries by siting a sheave, or often only half a sheave, at the site entrance or on a nearby roundabout. At Pooley Hall Colliery you are presented with the 'Rainbow Sheave of Heritage' which is obviously a most appropriate feature, or maybe not ............ The site is now a country park although the baths and workshop buildings remain in industrial use.

In World War 2 the Western Command Stop Line No.6 ran from Tamworth via Trent Valley, E side of Stoke-on-Trent, to Macclesfield and Stockport, thence to 6 miles SE of Manchester. This line of fortifications was designed to resist an invasion force coming from the east. In a field north of Hopwas, not far from the start of the line, is this pillbox close to the River Tame and easily seen from the West Coast main line.

Whilst mooching around old colliery sites in the Midlands this Nissen Hut appeared behind a hedge at Pooley Hall near Polesworth.

Empty limestone hoppers waiting for the route out of Port Adelaide after delivering at the Penrice Soda Ash plant.

Junction Mine at Broken Hill was developed from 1884 and from 1886 to closure in 1923 the Broken Hill Junction Silver Mining Co. produced ore to the value of £1.2 million. The mine was reworked by North Broken Hill Ltd between 1946 and 1962, and again by South Broken Hill Ltd. until 1972. The wooden headframe is the oldest on the line of lode and was erected at Browne Shaft in the 1890s athough it has been modified several times. The winding enginehouse and ore bins here date from the 1946 reworking.

Early morning at the Port Pirie smelter and the telpher and grab were hard at work moving coke from the storage bunkers.

Tarmacadam plant at the Lafarge operated Graig Quarry, Llanarmon.

140 hp Crossley gas engine driving a Siemens dynamo generating set at the Brunner Mond soda ash works in Winnington, Northwich c1900.

Manchester Bus Timetable, June 1967.

Cliff Quarry at Crich is now abandoned and up for sale apart from the section used by the tramway museum. This quarry was once owned by the Clay Cross Company and supplied stone to the Ambergate limekilns via a metre gauge railway built by George Stephenson.

The Carling coke works in Forbach, Lorraine, is in the foreground and off to the left. Opened in 1910 it closed in 2009 and is currently being dismantled. The 1,873 MW Emile Huchet power plant behind is operated by EON and comprises 3 coal fired units 115 MW (unit 4), 330 MW (unit 5) and 600 MW (unit 6) and 2 CCGT units (414 MW each for units 7 and 8).

Sculpture outside the steelworks at Florange. ArcelorMittal have closed the blast furnaces at this site but retained the mills which now roll billets brought from the Tata plant at Scunthorpe in the United Kingdom.

This corrugated iron goods store stands beside the road to Ipstones just a short distance from the site of Ipstones Station on the Leek, Caldon and Waterhouses branch.