Things to look at and read

Lost in a Landscape: The Vinegar Pond, Mousehold Heath, Norwich

Funny little pond, locally quite well known, lots of stories about what it is, "it's a bomb crater" (it isn't), it's a pit dug for gravel/minerals (probably not), it was made by Bren Carriers exercising on the heath in WW2, yes quite... bit far fetched I thought....

Lost in a Landscape: RAF Happisburgh

RAF Happisburgh Everyone I mean *everyone* in North Norfolk, and the Eastern bit of North Norfolk, or East Norfolk as I like to call it when I'm a bit y'know, not from London or the home counties, knows Happisburgh. It's the most interesting bit of Norfolk Coast. This...

Lost boys: Sid Northrop

I recently rediscovered this. It was something I'd put on Flickr. It is the tale of another family member and his last few days and hours in the Great War. We visited the panel he is remembered on at Tyne Cot a couple of years ago. He was my grandmother Jesse Parr's...

Lost in a Landscape: Bawsey – the Church on the hill

It seemed rude not to, I've been driving past Bawsey for far too long, so on a trip to Derbyshire to drink and take in a band (Phantogram) with my Nephew Rich, I made an attempt to stop. In fact I had two attempts at it, Sundays' mission was stopped by the heavens...

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,...

Lost in a landscape: Barton Turf

Barton Turf – White light and angels. It rained, my god how it rained. A bank holiday hex hanging over Easter. And typically the patterns of various occupations in one household left me on my own staring at a refracted sodden world as the cars trundling along Aylsham...

Dead Cities: RAF Deopham Green

RAF Deopham Green Latterly, RAF Deopham Green was home to 452nd Bombardment Group (Heavy), becoming USAAF designation Station 142*. The group flew B-17 Flying Fortresses as part of the Eighth Air Force's strategic bombing campaign. This is a remnant of the North...

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...

Coasting: Sidestrand – the moving edge

Sidestrand - the moving edge There are a few places where you can really see the dynamism of the erosion of the soft coastline. It is obvious along nearly the whole length of Norfolk and well into Suffolk, our soft glacial memory is easily eroded. Shifts can be seen...

Dead cities: RAF Thorpe Abbotts

RAF Thorpe Abbotts In February (2014) I was fortunate enough to get invited by Waveney Valley Community Archaeology Group with the permission of Lord Mann on a reconnaissance mission for a project they are doing on studying standing buildings on the site of Thorpe...

Magdalen Street 2: St Botolph the traveller

Magdalen Street's hidden history:The lost churches Part 2, St Botolph. St Botolph or St Botulph or even St Botwulf was a church named after a saint  that now only really lives on in an adapted street name. Ignominiously lost in a few street signs in the precincts...

Through Glass: Dartmoor

Another set of odd negatives and plates I received a while ago via a very old friend Dave Guttridge. Dave is a photographer, musician and DJ by trade and also has an interest in the past, in particular shellac and the art of the gramophone. He found these while...

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.

Coasting: Trimingham

Coasting: Trimingham

Trimingham Stretches of Norfolk's curved coast get slightly brushed aside. Maybe they seem a bit inaccessible. Trimingham with its high cliffs, the highest in Norfolk and its all but hidden beach entrance off the coast road down a camouflaged dog-legged track is one...

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Lost in a landscape: Antingham

Lost in a landscape: Antingham

You can see Antingham, and identify it from quite a distance which is why I ended up there, I saw it from Suffield, remembered the view from trips to the coast up the A140 or across country out towards Aylsham. It stands out because of the two church towers outlined...

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Lost in a landscape: Gunton

Lost in a landscape: Gunton

When I was at primary school in the 1970s one of my friends lived in one of a row of cottages in Suffield which backs on to Gunton Park. It backed onto a farmyard full of interlocking hay bales, knackered cars, and a grain store with an egg-timer mountain of grain...

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The walled city 2: Berstrete gate

The walled city 2: Berstrete gate

Ber Street Gate or Berstrete Gate, sits just on the edge of Foulgers opening off Ber Street and Bracondale. Another Norwich city wall fragment, not the gate itself. The gate no longer exists, largely a result mainly of progress – progress sometimes has to embrace such...

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Walled city 1: Black Tower and Bracondale

Walled city 1: Black Tower and Bracondale

I'll start at Black Tower or Boteliers or Butlers tower in Bracondale and continue in no particular order. This was also known as Snuff Tower because it contained a snuff mill, and later a cotton mill which were still in evidence at the beginning of nineteenth century...

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Lost in a landscape: Worstead

Lost in a landscape: Worstead

  I was looking for something else, I didn't actually find what I was after, because of gates and no access signs and the sound of people murdering wildlife in Westwick woods, but as I pootled down another dead end this vista was there, so I hopped along the lane...

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Coasting: Morston and Blakeney

Coasting: Morston and Blakeney

This isn't really my home Coast, I grew up with The stretch from Mundesley in the middle, awareness stretching from Sheringham to Winterton, the bits beyond were different, Great Yarmouth to the South was the stuff of fevered dreams and slot machines, impossible hoop...

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Lost in a landscape: Burying kings – Sutton Hoo

Lost in a landscape: Burying kings – Sutton Hoo

There is probably no finer Anglo-Saxon timescape in East Anglia,  you are so directly in touch with a hauntingly beautiful landscape and can feel the significance of what you can see in front of you with only the most basic of knowledge. It is probably one of the most...

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Lost in a landscape: Thompson – Below the glacier.

Lost in a landscape: Thompson – Below the glacier.

When I was at school we had a teacher called Peter 'Percy' Williams, he primarily taught geography. At first he hammered it into our small and stupid heads; over those first three years he gradually worked out which ones of us were holding the water and who was...

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Lost in a Landscape: Wolterton

Lost in a Landscape: Wolterton

A bit of a beauty, this was nearer the start of our circuit quite obviously positioned in Wolterton Park next to the main drive; It's another life remnant a piece of the past which has gained purchase in the now by becoming a folly for the gentry. It is very pretty...

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Lost in a landscape: Mannington

Lost in a landscape: Mannington

Sunday seemed like it was the last blast of summer weather, that final sigh of heat and sun and as it goes some drifting was the perfect way to absorb those last few rays before the decent into the washes of winter Atlantic lows bear down across us. So we did a...

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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

Shot at Dawn: John Abigail

Shot at Dawn: John Abigail

John Abigail; A local lad, local to anyone in Norwich It's a longer story than I can write, and a sad tale too. Born in Thorpe Hamlet, they moved to Oak Street shortly before the outbreak of The Great War. John was one of eight children, the family were poor one with...

Vanishing Point: The Somme still flows – Schwaben redoubt

Vanishing Point: The Somme still flows – Schwaben redoubt

I've been distracted enough not to put fingers to keyboard for the last week or so. Mainly because I had an upcoming trip to France, my first on my own due to some fairly uncontrolled sets of human circumstance and how time plays its stupid games. Travelling isn't an...

Vanishing Point: Vladslo – Mother and son

Vanishing Point: Vladslo – Mother and son

Deutscher Soldatenfreidhof Vladslo. The Cemetery is about a mile and half north east of Vladslo which sounds like it should be on the steppe somewhere but isn't, it's in Western Flanders towards Diksmuide, Belgium, itself about 20 miles North of Ypres. It is somewhat...

Vanishing Point: Sint Juliaan – Under a green sea

Vanishing Point: Sint Juliaan – Under a green sea

The Brooding soldier sits on a corner at Sint Juliaan, or St Julian, or Vancouver Corner, take your pick from Flemish, English or Canadian. It is just to the North East of Ypres or Ieper on the way to Langemark/Poellcappelle not far from Passchendaele, but most sites...

The long walk

The long walk

Not the most thrilling set of photographs, but the one above shows how a field with some lumps in it, tells a story or doesn't. And of course it also tells how history is there, I'm just the princess who knows where that particular pea is under this particular...

Vanishing points: The Sad Angel of Kemmel

Vanishing points: The Sad Angel of Kemmel

The French Memorial at Kemmel. She sits next to a steep road in a cup in the trees, standing a fair way up the slopes of the mount on a clutch burning incline. Known as Mont Kemmel, Mount Kemmel or Kemmelburg depending on your nationality, all of them held it a one...

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.

Blitz Ghost – St Andrews

Blitz Ghost – St Andrews

This is Harmer's Factory on St Andrews Broad Street in Norwich on the 18th March 1943 and the 2nd March 2012, almost seventy years., it's also a weird bit of land with not much on it, sort of an entrance to a car park of sorts. Harmer's was hit several times, firstly...

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Tom Brittan’s Blitz

Tom Brittan’s Blitz

In 2012, I received a few emails from a chap called Tom Brittan who now lives in France. I''ll let him recount his story pretty much unedited; he lived just off the Unthank road and vividly remembers the bombs falling and the aftermath. My most vivid recollection of...

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Norwich in flames

Norwich in flames

Norwich in Flames: Here are a selection of George Swain's camera melting exploits. Originally photographed in Black and White. I colourised these, based on looking at modern colour photos of fires and then painting them in, very simply to be honest. They depict the...

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Imagined futures past: ’45 Plan

Imagined futures past: ’45 Plan

After the bombs had fallen wrecking a large area of the city centre and indeed laid waste to a huge amount of the city's housing stock around the fringes of the city and out into the Norfolk Countryside, The Corporation started to explore some brave new ideas; these...

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Live tweeting: Norwich Blitz 2

Live tweeting: Norwich Blitz 2

  29th and 30th April 1942. Again a live tweet of the Norwich Blitz, the second Baedeker Raid.   [View the story "Norwich Blitz - Raid 2, live tweets" on Storify]

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Live tweeting: Norwich Blitz 1

Live tweeting: Norwich Blitz 1

I've been left slightly speechless by the response to a something I did last night on the spur of a moment relating to The Norwich Blitz. I have a head full of stuff relating to lots of things, the inner nerd has lots of strange habits, and whilst mulling over whether...

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Through glass

Found slides, glass plates, photographs and archive material.

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Persistence of memory

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Black Dog Tales

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Georeferencing

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