Things to look at and read

Before the NHS…

I've blogged before about this on Flickr years ago, using some family photos which belonged to my mum. The Health Service is quite important in our family, there are many nurses and healthcare workers in the ranks. This was particularly true for her – she was involved...

Lost in a landscape: Hainford All Saints

Not everything is as it seems, and as you drive towards Hoveton from Hainford there is one of those odd little places, this is All Saints Church, it's separated from the uncentred village as it stands today, but isn't the site of a deserted village, rather the church...

Lost in a Landscape: Rich pickings – Swafield

Swafield and Bradfield ‘Fruit picking’ and ‘Pick your own’, are something commonly seen on hand painted signs still wedged in hedges and gateways across rural East Anglia and the Fens, it was and is part of a year long routine in Norfolk, especially with summer...

Approaching Nirvana

Heroes are strange beasts, as is memory. Nirvana never were particularly the former for me, but are very much part of the latter. Retrospectively – 25 years on almost to the day, it's still quite nice to know you were present at the stuttering birth of a new squalling...

Coasting: Lost lands – West Runton

Another one of my favourite bits of Norfolk coast, lots of reasons; my childhood, our children played here, I spent a lot of my teens mooching about between the slipway with Vodka and the Village Inn with beer, staggering up to Roman Camp to doss on mate's floors and...

Through Glass – Philip’s Glass: Norwich Trams

A few sample images from a batch of glass of Trams in Norwich I've got access to via a friend Phil. There are only three of these and they are in a bit of a state, looks like they weren't fixed terribly well and are quite badly smoked so I've had to pull them back a...

Lost in a landscape: Bromholm Priory

A bit of a hidden wonder, Bromholm or Broomholm Priory also known as Bacton Abbey sits on a piece of farmland just off the coast road as you enter Bacton from the Mundesley end. The Priory is situated on private land, the main surviving gate at the top of a row of...

Coasting: Walcott

We used to go to Walcott and Bacton quite a lot when I was a kid, it's was and is all concrete, groynes and flat inland space, with the rising glacial moraines starting just to the North towards Trimingham. You can see the past up on the cliffs to the North the rise...

Lost in a Landscape: Blicking Mausoleum

Blickling is a rather lovely estate near Aylsham, open to the public, with a  few good trackways and walks across it to amble along. It also contains a couple of interesting buildings aside from the more obvious hall itself and the large Carp filled lake, so it's easy...

Vanishing Point: Stumbling through Ploegsteert

I'm a virtual veteran of two world wars, one in particular; The Great War, the one to end all thingummys... as an anomalous title for a war as there could possibly be. That aside I do a lot of, or as much as I can afford and fit into life without annoying my very...

Found photos: The lost boys of Cromer

I go through people's leftovers, their old clothes, the maps of lines on their faces, sit in their seats and eat from their plates; strangers' stuff. They are people I can't know nor ever will in the vast majority of cases, nearly all of them are unreachable; dead,...

Magdalen Street 6: All Saints Fybriggate

Magdalen Streets' hidden history: The lost churches Part 6, All Saints Fybriggate There were two All Saints in Norwich, the remaining one stands in the shadow of Westlegate House, the old Provident Mutual office block which towers over it like the tall kid who hit...

New from The Flatland

Forgotten Norfolk - Brian Wells

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New Forms – City

Photographs of Norwich North taken from forever to 2023

Vanishing Points

Western Front prints from 2012 to 2018, from the 2018 exhibition.

Colour

Landscapes, prints from various series and some one-offs by request.

Lost in a landscape

Various prints from the East, Lost in Landscape and Coasting series.

New Forms – edge

Photos of Great Yarmouth between 2000 and 2021.

Coasting

Photography from along the coast of East Anglia

Posters

A selection of posters based on various buildings, objects and projects.

Limited Editions

Special edition numbered/signed Giclée prints – studio printed

Flatland

Small publishing co-operative, slowly growing our book list.

Lost in a Landscape

and other places…

A series of essays

An unstructured collection of written pieces which are basically a long form series of intermittent work – mostly observational, written to accompany photographs shot over the last ten to fifteen years across Norfolk and East Anglia. These essays look both at what is seen as well as what isn’t; acknowledging the depth of the landscapes we briefly inhabit, and the lives lived that are disguised by geographical, environmental and human change.

The history of us is in our soil, mixed with the crag and flint, hidden in our place-names, and lines our fields and boundaries. The past is there, in the lines our rivers, roads, streets and buildings. The narrative we exist as part of is as deep as it is long.

Maps: Norwich City Wall

Maps: Norwich City Wall

Basically Norwich City Wall with all the main elements marked on, This is not 100% accurate for detail, It's stepping off point and that is all at that stage. Building started on 1294, finished in 1350-ish, then we started to pull it down. Privately financed partly by...

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Forgotten Outposts: Stella Plage Atlantikwall

Forgotten Outposts: Stella Plage Atlantikwall

A beach in Northern France, in the Pas De Calais actually, Stella Plage sits just south of Le Touquet and Etaples. It's a beautiful beach, so I ignored it and took photos of this bunker. I can't find anything much out about it. Except it's a Vf style reinforced...

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Lost Rivers of Norwich

Lost Rivers of Norwich

I'm nothing if not unoriginal, this has come about for two reasons; me watching the excellent Thames Discovery project at work on Twitter, And more recently an idea of Jon Welch's based on seeing this rather remarkable work of Art by Stephen Water; his is hours of...

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Coasting: Trimingham – On the beach

Coasting: Trimingham – On the beach

I wrote a bit about Trimingham a few weeks ago, it was canvas really, the backdrop, the beach is the deep history. Being what it is and how quiet it can be we went back. There was a bitter driving Northerly, ice bearing, even the hardy fishermen had all packed up and...

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Coasting: Happisburgh

Coasting: Happisburgh

I keep trapping myself in series' of work and forgetting that sometimes I take a photo just because I happen to be somewhere and something special happens. I was just poking about in my digital shoe boxes and I came across these. We went along the coast the day after...

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Forgotten outposts: Brandiston type 22

Forgotten outposts: Brandiston type 22

There are hundreds of these scattered across Norfolk, it's not a modern phenomenon either. Defence starts at the gate to your house, there's ramparts and forts, dating from the late Neolithic to fairly recent lumps of Cold War concrete dotted about on awkward corners...

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Lost in a Landscape: Felbrigg

Lost in a Landscape: Felbrigg

Plank Bridge. That's what it means, bit of Old Norse from Denmark 'Fjol', and a bit of Old English 'Brycg' itself a Friesian word which is almost the same as the Saxon which in itself shows how close the waves lap the shore when it comes to settlers, or invaders or...

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Coasting: Caister

Coasting: Caister

Caister on Sea, March 2013, a scouring North Easterly for a few weeks changed the profile of of this, and Hopton beaches dramatically, revealing some secrets that haven't been seen for a decade or so, estimates indicate losses of between five and ten feet of sand,...

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Lost in a landscape: Booton

Lost in a landscape: Booton

There's things you round a corner and don't really expect to see in the corner of a field, ostriches for instance, rare but not unlikely, elephants, I've seen photos of elephants in Norfolk fields. Booton has a really staggeringly odd, stamp-on-your-brakes sort of...

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Dead cities: La Coupole

Dead cities: La Coupole

This is the Ida railway supply tunnel, Bauvorhaben 21 (Building Project 21), Schotterwerk Nordwest (Northwest Gravel Works) at Wizernes, St Omer. Built by Organisation Todt using "compulsory labour" (about 60% French, 40% non combatant German) the tunnel was built for...

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Lost in a landscape: Hainford All Saints

Lost in a landscape: Hainford All Saints

Not everything is as it seems, and as you drive towards Hoveton from Hainford there is one of those odd little places, this is All Saints Church, it's separated from the uncentred village as it stands today, but isn't the site of a deserted village, rather the church...

read more
Lost in a Landscape: Blicking Mausoleum

Lost in a Landscape: Blicking Mausoleum

Blickling is a rather lovely estate near Aylsham, open to the public, with a  few good trackways and walks across it to amble along. It also contains a couple of interesting buildings aside from the more obvious hall itself and the large Carp filled lake, so it's easy...

read more

Vanishing Points

The Great War series

Vanishing Points is a long-form photographic series with accompanying interpretation consisting of stories relating to the landscapes of the Western Front, memorials and some of the figures that peopled them.

A selection of 36 final images was made from over 120 photographs which formed the core of the 2018 exhibition and collection at St Peter Hungate in Norwich, The exhibition was timed to coincide with the centenary of the Armistice and ran for two weeks.

The response was truly staggering.

The original articles can be found on the links below and images can be purchased from the collection in the shop.

Articles

Vanishing Point: Essex Farm, The Eve brothers

Vanishing Point: Essex Farm, The Eve brothers

I'm fortunate, I get to go to Ypres and the Somme and indeed various other bits of the Western Front fairly often, I do it mostly for my own vicarious pleasure/misery or whatever you find you want to call it. If I face facts it is I suppose a strange thing to want to...

Vanishing Point: Rosebeke

Vanishing Point: Rosebeke

A strange day. I've been working very loosely on an ongoing project called 'Vanishing Points' for a while. I'm a bit of a fan of VPs, lots of artists are as a way of leading the eye into compositions, focussing the viewers mind. Kubrick for instance is a master of the...

Vanishing Point: The Ridge

Vanishing Point: The Ridge

It's quite an apposite moment, the ridge being what it is, a symbol of so much thrashing about in the earth trying to gain a foothold, somewhere that looms large in Canada's psyche and it's nearly Canada Day, a day that symbolises so much about the gradual joining of...

Vanishing Point: The Redoubt

Vanishing Point: The Redoubt

There are areas of the Somme where you can really feel the past; where the landscape whilst modified hasn't been essentially changed. This is one of those places. What remains isn't difficult to spot and is easy to get too a walk down a grass clotted, tyre rutted path...

Vanishing point: The Leaning Madonna

Vanishing point: The Leaning Madonna

She's not leaning anymore obviously, originally designed by sculptor Albert Roze and dubbed the 'Golden Virgin' - she stands holding aloft a golden baby Jesus on the very top of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebières in the middle of Albert. In fact she's very shiny...

Vanishing points: Mining the front – Messines 1917

Vanishing points: Mining the front – Messines 1917

The anniversary of the massive mining attack around Messines 1917 passed at 3.10am on Saturday the seventh of June, ninety-seven years since. This year rather overshadowed by the 70th anniversary of D-Day on the sixth of June and justly so. But this is one of those...

Vanishing Points series prints

If you would like to buy a Limited or Open Edition Print from the Vanishing Points series some are still available in the shop

Like what I do?

If you like what I do you can support the site running costs here by sending me a few quid using Kofi. Always much appreciated.

Blitz ghosts, bomb maps and more…

Ten years ago I did a thing, the echo is still rattling about in my head, occasionally it slides noisily back into my consciousness so I add to it, it’s mostly here.

Ghosts: A Dog’s Life, the Catton Liberator

Ghosts: A Dog’s Life, the Catton Liberator

This was the scene in Catton at the corner of Church Street and Spixworth Road on the 13th February 1945 and the corner of the same Roads on 22nd December 2011. The Liberator 'A Dog's Life' was one of two that crashed in Catton on the outskirts of Norwich, The other...

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Baedeker Blitz: The Hubbards

Baedeker Blitz: The Hubbards

Thomas Hubbard, Aged 52, Died 28-4-42 Norwich Garden of remembrance. Memorial cemetery. Farrow Road, Norwich. "The date that sticks in my mind is 28th April 1942 and the time 10.30 At that moment I was in the Anderson shelter in my garden on St. Martins Road, Norwich...

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Blitz Ghost: Alexandra Road and Helena Road

Blitz Ghost: Alexandra Road and Helena Road

Alexandra Road, another Norwich Blitz Ghost. A 250kg bomb took out about 4 properties, quite a precise slice, which is still very evident if you look at the row today the missing block was replaced with a more modern variant of the generic terrace, a pattern you can...

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Blitz Ghosts: St Benedicts Gate

Blitz Ghosts: St Benedicts Gate

On the 28th April 1942 this was the result of a 1000kg Hermann that burst on what is now the traffic lights at the bottom of Grapes Hill. The men aren't short, they standing in the edge of a hole that was rather wide and very deep caused by the blast a Herman was...

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Blitz Ghost: St Bartholomew

Blitz Ghost: St Bartholomew

One of the few real reminders of the blitz on Norwich that is easy to visit is the church of St Bartholomew, Heigham, Norwich, it's quite easy to find sitting just of Heigham Street and Waterworks Road. On the night of the 27th of April 1942 when the first of the big...

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Blitz Ghosts – Rampant Horse Street, Norwich

Blitz Ghosts – Rampant Horse Street, Norwich

Rampant Horse Street, Norwich, Seventy years on, plus a bit. The result of the second night of the main two raids 29th/30th April 1942, The fires are out, must be the modern rain. This is the scene that did for the Caleys factory the previous night, less so than...

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Through glass

Found slides, glass plates, photographs and archive material.

Mystery: Albert and the returning troops 1916

Mystery: Albert and the returning troops 1916

A mystery photo. Last week Bethan Holdridge who works for the Museums service in Norwich invited me to have a look through her Great Grandfather – Oliver Isaac Brown's collection of photos. He was a Suffolk man but lived in Great Yarmouth. A sapper in the Royal...

Found photos: The lost boys of Cromer

Found photos: The lost boys of Cromer

I go through people's leftovers, their old clothes, the maps of lines on their faces, sit in their seats and eat from their plates; strangers' stuff. They are people I can't know nor ever will in the vast majority of cases, nearly all of them are unreachable; dead,...

Through Glass: Norwich 1900

Through Glass: Norwich 1900

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to have a box of glass slides come into my possession, here are a few of them, one day I'll get the whole lot scanned in and shared. But for now here are a selection of Norwich through the glass from about 1890 to 1920. I suspect...

Persistence of memory

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Black Dog Tales

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Georeferencing

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