Category Archives: Art and architecture

Nov 05 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

The Humber Bridge

Wednesday 4th November 2020, 11.25am (day 3,359)

Humber Bridge, 4/11/20

For now, I’m not saying anything about the reimposition of house arrest that comes tomorrow. The weather was far too good for that, and far too good to stay at home, so I went out and bagged another of my County Top walks while I could still do so without breaking some ridiculous new legislation. And a good walk it was too, given added interest by walking over this gargantuan piece of engineering, the Humber Bridge. This was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1981: 1.4 miles long, it took me over half an hour to cross, and the colossal stanchions are over 500 feet high.

Great bridges to have featured on this blog? In the UK at least, the Tay Bridge, the Forth Bridge, Devil’s Bridge, Hebden Bridge 🙂 (OK, maybe not the last one). There was that very long one in Lisbon too. It’s good to get out and see parts of my country that I’ve not seen, which is the ultimate point of my walking project. It’s good, and it’s healthy, and Johnson and his cabal of losers can all piss off. Oh, I said I wouldn’t say anything about it. Sorry.

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Oct 18 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Hebden Bridge

Mural (no longer heron)

Friday 16th October 2020, 1.30pm (day 3,340)

I quite like the heron mural that occupied this spot until fairly recently; now it has become this. Possibly this blog is now the only record of how it used to look. I do quite like its successor too, but this photo is more of all the various quadrilaterals on the side of what used to be the Hole in the Wall pub and has been ‘under refurbishment’ for what seems like years now.

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Oct 11 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Wainhouse Tower

Saturday 10th October 2020, 1.05pm (day 3,334)

In all these 3,334 days I have yet to depict my local area’s tallest construction, Wainhouse Tower — so here it is. When conceived in the 1870s this was originally going to be a mill chimney but disagreements between land- and mill-owners meant that it was eventually just built as a folly, and according to its Wikipedia page, it is the tallest folly in the world — which I did not know until just this last minute. So one to add to the ‘superlatives’ list on the Stats page when I next get round to updating it.

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Sep 30 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Flora/Fauna

Autumn comes to campus

Tuesday 29th September 2020, 2.40pm (day 3,323)

Campus tree, 29/9/20

It’s the end of September. The golden foliage is a sign autumn is here.  With it come the students — but this year, instead of being out meeting new people and enjoying themselves, largely they are walled up in high-tech prisons like the George Kenyon hall behind.  Still charged £9K (plus rent) for the privilege.  And the UoM is one of the better ones, presently.

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Sep 20 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Halifax bus station

Sunday 20th September 2020, 4.45pm (day 3,314)

Halifax bus station, 20/9/20

Another weekend ends at Halifax bus station.  After 11 different places in the last 12 days — only Hebden Bridge has been repeated as a location over this time — it’s time to stop wandering around for a while and spend some time at home.

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Aug 20 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

The Crescent, Buxton

Thursday 20th August 2020, 1.20pm (day 3,283)

Buxton Crescent, 20/8/20

Every British spa town worth its salt in the 18th century — Bath being the archetype — included a great sweeping crescent like this.  Buxton, a little town stuck a thousand feet up in the hills of north Derbyshire, therefore has this magnificent monument to Georgian good taste plonked in the middle of it. Buxton Mineral Water is mined literally from underneath it.

This Crescent has been empty for a long time, then years of wrangling about who would foot the bill for its restoration ended with it being converted into a hotel, due to be opened in May until you-know-what. But as its rebuilding is not yet over, that means there are no cars or other accessories defacing its facade — once the camera is lifted over the fencing in the way, anyway (visible to bottom left).

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Aug 08 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Paranoia

Friday 7th August 2020, 11.00am (day 3,270)

Paranoid house, 7/8/20

Here is a house occupied by someone with several problems. I’ve been passing it for a couple of years without it changing much, and there is evidence to suggest it’s been developing like this for 23 years.  Thing is, it has, as a result, become a tourist attraction, and this probably just adds to the occupant’s paranoia.  I will forego identifying its location, although it’s not round where I live.

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Aug 02 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

King’s Cross, underused

Saturday 1st August 2020, 11.25am (ish) (day 3,264)

King's Cross, empty, 1/8/20

It’s been nice to come down to London for a couple of days, the weather’s been good and I have met friends and had decent exercise.  But there’s been something eerie about it, unnatural and wrong.  Difficult to do much else today than post another picture of somewhere that should be very busy on this day and time under normal circumstances, but instead, echoed like an empty cathedral.

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Jul 20 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Watershed

Monday 20th July 2020, 2.15pm (day 3,252)

Watershed, 20/7/20

I went on a walk today along the Rochdale Canal from Littleborough to Walsden. Along that route one passes across the main watershed of northern England, which is marked by this sculpture, and poetry that you may enjoy (although the third and fourth lines are illegible on this reproduction — my apologies).  If I were to have passed water at this spot, random chance would have led to it either bouncing to the left, and thus flowing into the Irish Sea at via the rivers Roch, Irwell and Mersey.  Or, to the right — to flow into the North Sea, via the Calder, Aire and Humber.  A very real line — as the poem says, a “liquid equinox” — but not a visible one, not without this memorial.  Nice touch.

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Jul 18 2020
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Restoration project

Friday 17th July 2020, 10.35am (day 3,249)

Park House farm, 17/7/20

Bagged my second County Top in a week, a trip that took me through the urban delights of Wigan, which are more extensive than you might imagine. On the outskirts of town resides this ruin, still proudly marked as ‘Park House Farm’ on the map but now mouldering into decay. Urban explorers — catch it now before it is razed/incorporated into a new housing estate/featured on Grand Designs as a restoration project engaged in by those with too much money. It is presently a spooky, melancholy spot.

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