- 01 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Overgrown track, trees, drystone wall and bracken
Apart from walkers, I should imagine that the only traffic on this overgrown track would be agricultural vehicles from a farm further down the valley. The undisturbed grass and bracken suggest that such activity is infrequent. The small farmstead is amongst the trees colonising the house garden and the outbuildings beyond.
- 02 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Gate in garden wall with feral raspberry canes
This door is set into the high wall enclosing a sloping and south facing garden fronting the house. Although it’s now wildly overgrown it still has flowering shrubs visible at the upper end and fruit trees further down the slope. These feral raspberry canes growing between the track and wall are from once cultivated rows still evident inside the garden. At six feet tall these bright new growth canes clearly like their situation but birds must have cleared most of this season’s fruit from last year’s growth.
- 03 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Bramble thicket with farmhouse detail
Set at the head of a long south facing slope this house and its walled garden must have been a pleasant place; trees and outbuildings provide shelter to the rear. This perhaps once trim garden is now gone wild under a dense spread of brambles backed by flowering shrubs and apple trees
- 04 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Walls enclosing a wild garden and orchard
Stepping back a few paces reveals a perspective of a high masonry wall enclosing this end of the farmhouse and outbuildings and at a lower level extending across to the high lane wall and its door shown in Image 2. A lower drystone version edges the long garden and orchard.
- 05 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Looking back towards the farmhouse roof
This view from the lane shows the timber roof frames of the farmhouse and its lean-to almost completely stripped of its slates fronted by a stand of rose bay willow herb and backed by trees that have grown almost in contact with its façade. At that point they were so dense as to make access impossible.
- 06 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Skeletal roof timbers, slates and rosebay willow herb
Many slates have been lost from much of the rear roof of the house and a long lean-to extension. Rampant rosebay willow herb marks the stonework below. ‘Fireweed’ is an alternative name, particularly in North America but even in large drifts in full flower its colours are too gently subtle to suggest flames. Perhaps their breeze driven wave forms echo moving flames?
- 07 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Entry steps and door in a lean-to behind the house
Ferns seem to thrive in the dampness of this permanently shaded stepped entrance from the yard and its outbuildings. A horizontal cement wedge and a timber length high on the barn gable to the right suggests that a sloping roof once covered this space.
- 08 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Small outbuilding part collapsed
Overall, the farmstead is modest in area set with the house and largely single storey outbuildings flanking a small yard. It’s difficult to imagine anything other than compact machinery operating here. Did the double doors once protect a trap or small car in this end space to a small range of single storey structures including storage, privy, pig sties and midden?
- 09 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Door detail with flaking red paint, and willow herb
A rusted padlock secures this half-door with weather red paint and rusted hinges opening into a space only a little wider. I liked the fronting spread of willow herb spikes and their toning colours.
- 10 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Crumbling masonry and collapsed roof
To the right of the red door was this interesting combination of low half-door with an opening under a stone lintel set above. Holes drilled through the door and small walled spaces beyond suggest a piggery. Perhaps the upper space was floored for storage. The roof collapse obscured the original spaces and Images 8 and 9 were made after the heavy upper stonework had fallen.
- 11 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | The end space on the outbuildings
The tongue and grooved boards of this door had slipped to create a stepped top and the lower hinge no longer joined it to its frame. The next image shows a hatch door to the space accessed from the lane.
- 12 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Wooden gable end hatch with rowan berries
Traces of black paint remain on this small wooden door set into the gable end overlooking the lane. Bright vermilion rowan berries are offset by the dark green leaf tones and the building’s textures. Coal from a cart on the lane might once have been shovelled through the hatch.
- 13 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Outbuildings in stone, brick, timber and slate
This short range of structures extends the length of the narrow yard opposite those shown in Images 8 to 12. More than half its length is timbered in a poor state of repair.
- 14 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Decaying timber doors framed by stone and brick
A stone gable and brick interior cross wall flank double doors below and a single above. The yard’s hard surface was well hidden by a dense layer of grass.
- 15 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Collapsing barn roof
A roof collapse had started by the extensive decay in the roof timbers against the rear wall. There’s a clear difference in the quality of the stone used in that and the gable end.
- 16 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Displaced lean-to roof
A lean-to extension had been added to the barn but time and decay had allowed it to slide corner first to the ground. A car is barely visible beyond, hidden away and further obscured by an overgrown hawthorn.
- 17 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Steel framed barn clad in corrugated iron
A steel framed open barn stands outside the northern boundary wall of the farmstead, here enclosing space for animals, possibly pigs housed in the low building beyond.
- 18 ABANDONED NORTH PENNINE BUILDINGS 3 | Metal barn sheltering old farm machinery
The open barn was becoming more so as timber lengths and sheets of the corrugated iron cladding were parting from the steel frame. An old and rusting angled elevator and another machine stood inside.