Tag Archives: industrial

Wool for the loom

Saturday 21st June 2025, 12.40pm (day 5,049)

Loom, 21/6/25

With little else to do today (the football season hasn’t started yet), I visited the Calderdale Industrial Museum and learned some things about local industry around the Halifax area that I didn’t know before. Like, John Mackintosh became very rich and successful, founding the company that bore his name, and whose successors still manufacture Quality Street chocolates in Halifax, thanks only to the cooking of his wife Violet. She was the one who invented modern toffee — he was the one who called himself “The Toffee King”, though.

But for the photo, I’ll go with this mass of red and blue strands of wool, all converging into the Jacquard loom that is currently operating to the right, having been turned on for a few minutes during which time it produced plenty of noise and a few dozen lines of carpet.

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Home of our robot overlords

Friday 13th December 2024, 10.00pm (day 4,859)

Low Moor factories, 13/12/24

The chemical plant which spreads for many acres around Low Moor railway station is one of my favourite places, at least for photography. Particularly at night, it looks magnificent: like the setting for Brazil or Blade Runner or some other sci-fi dystopia. (It looks interesting from a distance too, as suggested the last time it appeared on here, on September 1st.) And there are never any people seen there. In a few decades’ time perhaps the whole planet will be run from such places. Perhaps it already is.

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The chemical plant

Sunday 1st September 2024, 2.50pm (day 4,756)

The area around Low Moor railway station, to the south of Bradford, is the most industrialised part of my local area. There’s plenty of photographic interest to be had within it, whether close-up or from more of a distance, like here. It’s nice that the windsock continues the diagonals of the cable and stairway, but its presence is somewhat ominous — and surely linked to the fact that Low Moor station is the only one I know where there are display boards warning of what to do if the alarms go off and the area needs to be evacuated. But it hasn’t happened…. yet.

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Spinning machinery

Wednesday 1st November 2023, 2.20pm (day 4,451)

Spinning machinery, 1/11/23

November opens with a far more interesting day than October closed. A day off work was called for, with Clare’s company. This is taken in the Bradford Industrial Museum, which is free to entry, easy to reach from home and has been there all the 23 years we’ve lived there, only I’ve never been there before. Worth a visit though.

On this shot, the game is to spot the asymmetries that are not the fault of the photographer. As in the puzzles in magazines — how many can you see…? I have at least six that trouble me.

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Warrington Bank Quay station

Monday 29th August 2022, 5.25pm (day 4,022)

Warrington Bank Quay station, 29/8/22

I’ve been to more than a few railway stations in my time, and whether in the UK or elsewhere, few are as gloriously industrial as Warrington Bank Quay. Yet on the other side of the tracks — the Town Hall, parks, leafy streets.

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Factory by Low Moor station

Monday 18th April 2022, 1.15pm (day 3,889)

Low Moor factory, 18/4/22

By Low Moor station, in Bradford, there lies this huge industrial complex: silos, pipes, frames, boxes, brickwork, but no people. It hums and burbles to itself as it gets on with whatever it is doing — there is no way to tell what this is, no corporate signage, no advertising. In the coming AI- and machine-ruled future, perhaps the whole world will look like this. But it is interesting to look at, all the same.

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Factory at night

Tuesday 21st December 2021, 10.10pm (day 3,771)

Factory at night, 21/12/21

It’s the longest night of the year. On my walk to Low Moor station in Bradford tonight, I passed through this industrial zone in which all the factories were still lit, burbling away internally, though no people were in sight. The robots may well now be in full charge. It would explain a lot about current political trends.

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