Category: North West

Park Hill, Barrowford, Lancashire

This year I have had an enjoyable time working with Ruth Darling, and Laurie Cooper on a number of Lancashire and Greater Manchester projects.

This afternoon we met up at the Pendle Heritage Centre which is remarkable for its diverse scenery and vernacular beauty. The Centre is a preserved riverside farmstead called Park Hill comprising houses, barns, stables, woodland and gardens.

These photos were all taken a few yards from each other before our meeting.

Victorian Society Visits Accrington

Yesterday, Gillian Berry, of Haworth Art Gallery, and I hosted the annual tour of the Victorian Society Northern Building Committee, which this year came to Accrington.

At Haworth Art Gallery

On the morning, Gillian showed our visitors around the Haworth Art Gallery which is located at Hollins Hill, a large Walter Brierley designed Arts & Crafts house. It has a super collection of nineteenth century paintings and the finest museum of Tiffany glassware in Europe.

 

One of the Tiffany vases on show

On the afternoon, we toured Accrington town centre which has a wonderfully coherent townscape and some great Regency, Victorian, Edwardian and Modern era architecture. Highlights were the Red Lion Coaching Inn, Accrington Market House, Riley’s Arcade, Peel Institute, now the Town Hall, and Accrington Carnegie Library.

H. G. Hillier designed Arts & Crafts stair window, J. & M. Wade designed art nouveau tiles and staircase ironwork at Accrington Carnegie Library.

We then looked around the just completed projects of the Accrington THI, where architects Dominic Roberts and Dino Kotlar showed off their wonderful restoration of The Exchange, with its extravagant two-storey shop front.

Francis Roberts Architects’ drawing of the restored Exchange

Everyone had a wonderful time!

Tweet from Andy Marshall (@fotofacade), at 11 Jun, 16:47

I’ve got that silly Friday feeling 😜. Quick walk through the gorgeous timbers of Pendle Heritage Centre’s vernaculartastic cruck barn in the beautiful must see destination of Barrowford, Lancs. #htnwphoto https://t.co/1JKeln7Y1A https://twitter.com/fotofacade/status/1403378359615332362

Pigstone Walls adjacent Cribden Hill

Cribden Hill, Rossendale, lies between Haslingden and Rawtenstall rising up quite steeply to over 400 metres. Most of the moorland fields are enclosed by drystone walls made of small flat pieces of Rossendale Flag, a Carboniferous sandstone. They can be beautifully constructed.

However, there are one or two boundaries on the Haslingden side of the hill made of large cut flags set on end, sometimes called pigstones.

It must have taken considerable effort to cut these large flags and bring them up the slopes of the hill and one wonders why they were sometimes chosen over drystone walls. Perhaps when a Georgian farmer needed to subdivide an existing field very quickly, this was the way to do it.

The walls pre-date the 1840s six inch OS maps but they have iron fittings which suggest they are late 1700s or early 1800s in date.

Thoughtful reflections from James Rebanks

James Redbanks is one of the small number of Lakeland shepherds and farmers who have popular social media presences. James’ beautiful photographs show how a traditional pictorial approach still has much to offer and that photographing intensively in one place brings a special depth and quality to one’s work.

Here he is, with photos, writing about his experience of 2020.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55415496

Sunset on Solway

It was a nice sunset at Bowness-on-Solway yesterday.

The Cumbrian Solway is famous for its bird reserves of which there are ten, including RSPB Campfield Marsh. This is more than in any other place in England.

It is also an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty characterised by cattle which freely graze along the coast road.

The hill in the distance is Mount Criffel in Dumfries and Galloway. Nobody knows how the name Criffel came about though it may be derived from Crowfell.