Cheshire

Ingersley Vale or Clough mill was built by Edward Collier in 1792/93 as a cotton spinning mill. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1819. Originally there was a smaller wheel house containing two overshot water wheels, one above the other, one of 22ft diameter, the other of 32ft, designed to use the water twice. When more power was required the wheel house was enlarged with the wheelhouse visible on the left, and a single 56 foot diameter by 9 foot wide wheel was installed. The wheel was, at 56 feet in diameter, the second largest in England, and only exceeded in Britain by the wheel at Laxey in the Isle of Man, and that at Diggle mill in Greater Manchester. In 1878 the mill was converted to a bleachworks and in the 20th century saw a range of uses, mainly textile based. A fire in November 1999 destroyed the roof and remaining floors of the original mill building which has subsequently remained a derelict shell.

Derelict clay retorts at the site of Poynton gasworks. This gasworks was developed in the 1870s when a much smaller works was abandoned. It closed in 1935 at the same time as the colliery which owned it. Gas was then piped into the village from the gasworks at Stockport.

Wort coolers Nos 1 & 2 at the Robinson's brewery in Stockport. These have since been taken out of use with the modernisation of the brewery but still remain to be seen on brewery tours.

CF Fertilisers is located on 124 acres of land close to the Manchester Ship Canal and consists of 1 Ammonia, 3 nitric acid plants with a further Nitrogen fertiliser plant and 3 compound lines. With approximately 400 employees, Ince produces 1 million tonnes of fertiliser per annum and supplies the key market sectors for grass and arable farming. The site manufactures nitrogenous fertiliser based on Ammonium Nitrate (Nitram®) and is the largest UK producer of True Granular Compound fertilisers (NPKS).

The wartime oil pipeline between Stanlow and Immingham ran through Poynton in Cheshire where there was a pumping station to boost the flow. At some point after the war the pipeline was realigned in this area and the pumping station abandoned. Remarkably the buildings have survived, this one containing a small office at the front and the blast wall protected space for the oil engines and pumps at the rear.

The Round Nursery is a formal plantation of Spanish Chestnut set out to enhance the parkland belonging to Sir George Warren in Poynton during the later 18th century. The trees are now over mature and many have fallen and disappeared during the last 65 years. It is a shame that this distinctive feature will soon disappear.

Sponds Colliery lies across a moor some 1100ft up in the parish of Lyme Handley. in the nineteenth century the land was in the ownership of the Legh's of Lyme Hall and the coal mines were let for many years to James Jackson, a farmer from Pott Shrigley. He worked the Sweet Seam via a series of pits which he sank as the workings moved from north to south across the moor. This shaft was around 300ft deep and may have been in operation in the 1870s or early 1880s. The whim winding gin stood just behind the photographer. Along the trackclose to the wall in the background can be seen the spoil from another shaft.

A Pacer unit was often left in the bay platform at Stockport overnight. I found 142 054 lurking there one night as I returned from Stoke and had to wait a while for a connection onto the Buxton branch. These units will not be mourned by me now they have finally been withdrawn.

This is the route of a standard gauge railway rope-worked incline built to carry coal from the Albert and Blackcroft Pits of Poynton Collieries down to a coal yard on the turnpike road where transshipment to carts for Stockport took place. The isolated line was built in the early 1840s and after the main line connection was made via the Prince's Incline in 1845 it was abandoned by 1848. Although abandoned for over 170 years the earthworks remain very obvious and are now used as a pleasant footpath.

An East Midlands service comprising 156 408 headed by 158 889 is approaching the site of Hazel Grove MR Station and will soon take the Hazel Grove chord onto the LNWR Buxton branch towards Stockport. This section of line opened as the Midland Railway's Disley Cutoff in 1902. The chord line at Hazel Grove was completed in 1986 and allows services from Sheffield to access Stockport on the way to Manchester Piccadilly.

The painting gang set about refurbishing the metalwork on the Norbury Crossing distant signal at Middlewood on the Buxton branch.

Virginia Mills, Higher Hillgate, Stockport. This property is sometimes said to be a former cotton mill but it was actually built in the 1890s by Giles Atherton as a hat factory and possibly for the manufacture of hat-making machinery. The initials G A can be seen in the etched glass of some of the ground floor windows.

When I was a young lad my bedroom window looked east towards the hills and prominent on the first ridge rising from the Cheshire Plain was a plantation of beech trees known as Cawley Nursery. This stood at the uppermost point of Sir George Warren's Poynton Park. Today many of the trees have fallen due to their age and the plantation is much reduced. The mound at centre right is the spoil heap of an eighteenth century coal pit.

The sunburst effect seen on a garage from the 1950s. A plate in the centre states made & supplied by C & R Constructions Ltd, Halifax & Prescot. This business is still in Halifax although now dealing with property maintenance. The company was started by Leslie Chippendale in 1955 who started making garden sheds and then asbestos and concrete garages. The company was so successful that within a few years it quickly became on of the biggest garden shed and garage manufacturers in the country. When integral garages became the fashion, Leslie moved on to making portable buildings and at one time the company employed 140 people.

An East Midlands service comprising 158 889 and 156 408 leaving Disley Tunnel towards Hazel Grove.

The scene at West Kirby on Monday last. The walk is actually between the marine lake and the Dee estuary. If it gets choppy out there you get really wet.

Whilst out walking we came across this coal shaft that had let go. Until the collapse there was no sign on the surface of there being a shaft apart from the low spoil mound. A public footpath runs alongside and no doubt thousands of feet have passed over the capping under the grass. This pit will have worked the Upper and Lower Holcombe Brook seams in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. These seams were very thin, probably a maximum of 18 inches. The depth of the shaft is likely to be around 80ft.

A panorama of the Fiddler's Ferry power station just a few months before it was shut down on 31st March 2020.