Things to look at and read

Painted saints – Digital conservation and visualisation

A while back I wrote something about Swafield, which you can find here. I visited it for various reasons, one of which was the rood screen which is rather lovely. This isn't uncommon in Britain, it's especially true of East Anglia and Norfolk. It set me wondering what...

Noisebox

This is primarily simply a list of all the records Noisebox in Norwich put out. Noisebox opened at the beginning of the 1990s. Set up by Pete Morgan, then fairly fresh in from Wales, and therefore known as 'Morgan the Noise'. Noisebox opened in the Old Fishmarket on...

Mark Watson

As you get older it’s very easy to take someone’s existence for granted. It doesn’t mean you no longer care, because we as people are woven out of all we’ve said and done, those we’ve met, who we know and who we count as friends – those important people we’ve met and...

Lost in a Landscape: Little Hautbois

Another desertion. The photograph below was taken looking very roughly South at the present day situation of Little Hautbois; Little more than a row of houses just off the B1150, set in Pretty Farmland, it still just about clings on to its existence. As you follow 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...

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...

Brighton, before the fall

When I was a kid and on into my teens I used to dream about the stars moving. I mean, I know they are actually moving, but then I could see them in 3D shifting and jittering, I could see the satellites and spacecraft in amongst them like an animated model right there...

The Goodrum slides – found photos

Barrack street, Norwich, is a non-place. There's not much there to see, it's a place to pass through, a ring road asphalt necklace choking the medieval. Apart from some tasty post war council flats and a building I once was trained to explain Richard Branson's...

The Norwich School of Art – John Wonnacott

This painting is by  John Wonnacott. He taught us life drawing at the Norwich School of Art (Now NUA) in the first studio on the corner overlooking the river which is in the painting. I first went in 1982 as an external student, that's to say my then O level and A...

Vanishing Point: Fricourt New Military

The best and the worst of it all are hidden over a brow. You won't find the chattering crowds of the nexus points where death draws itself to a peak, this is not Thiepval or the Menin Gate. Nobody talks, no one sniggers, there is no rustle of frite wrapper when a hush...

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...

Through glass: Norwich 1960s – The Phoenix slides part 1.

This is the first of a series of posts. These will be based around a collection of found photographs which were pointed out to me by a friend in possession of someone else I know who didn't really know what to do with them. These were picked up at a jumble sale; a...

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: Winterton

Coasting: Winterton

Yet more lumps of concrete, I doubt a the vast majority of people even give them a thought apart from trying not to scratch the car. Bit strange though, 13 ton blocks of concrete in a car park, and on the beach in one of those lovely little Norfolk corners. Winterton,...

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Lost in a landscape: East Somerton

Lost in a landscape: East Somerton

Norfolk is full of holes, little dells and corners, drives and pathways that sort of amble off in all directions vanishing over a rise or fading into a dark arch of trees. East Somerton is just one of those many little nooks that almost don't exist, the past clinging...

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Lost in a Landscape: Shipden

Lost in a Landscape: Shipden

We are spoilt for lost villages in Norfolk and due to the nature of the coast have a huge number that weren't down to the usual suspects, so not things like plague, pestilence or bad land for farming or landlords enclosing land or commons; moving sheep in to replace...

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Dead cities: RAF Attlebridge

Dead cities: RAF Attlebridge

RAF Attlebridge ...the end of the South Eastern runway, Honingham Road, Western Longville. The most accessible publicly visible bit of the airfield left. The first station built in Norfolk for WW2 use. Originally RAF flying Blenheims and Bostons, it passed to USAAF as...

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Coasting: Walcott

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...

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Coasting: Horsey

Coasting: Horsey

Horsey is a curious area, it's always felt like slightly dead ground to me, for the uninitiated it is just to the North of Winterton and South of Waxham, it has it's own Broad a large flat expanse of water edged by windpumps, dunes and intermittent seals. One of my...

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Lost in a landscape: Bowthorpe DMV

Lost in a landscape: Bowthorpe DMV

  We live in Bowthorpe for about three months, it wasn't my cup of tea, I've never quite got my head around modern houses, preferring to live in a series of brick built Victorian freezers with leaky roofs and nowhere to park, I'm clever like that. One of the...

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Lost in a Landscape: Little Hautbois

Lost in a Landscape: Little Hautbois

Another desertion. The photograph below was taken looking very roughly South at the present day situation of Little Hautbois; Little more than a row of houses just off the B1150, set in Pretty Farmland, it still just about clings on to its existence. As you follow the...

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Dead cities: Langham Dome

Dead cities: Langham Dome

Langham Dome A sort of anti-axis forces death star type thing. It looks a bit like one of those chocolate bombs or a steamed pudding, but about 18 feet high, made of reinforced concrete and painted black. Nestling on the edge of an abandoned airfield about 4 miles...

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Dead cities: RAF Thorpe Abbotts

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...

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Lost in a Landscape: North Walsham – The revolt 1381

Lost in a Landscape: North Walsham – The revolt 1381

I found myself with a few free moments on Sunday afternoon and after some deliberating with tea and fags decided the best option was to tick something off my lists of things I wanted to go and see and do. So, I ended up in North Walsham, a market town I'd lived in for...

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Lost in a Landscape: Arminghall henge

Lost in a Landscape: Arminghall henge

Imagine for a moment flying over a landscape. There is a city below you receding to one side, fields coming into view on the other, lots of features to look at as well as flying a plane. You look down and spot a mark in a field, and this is the sort of thing you are...

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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

Vanishing Point: Stumbling through Ploegsteert

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...

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.

Norwich Baedeker blitz: The Lockwoods

Norwich Baedeker blitz: The Lockwoods

The Lockwood family lived at number 65 Rosebery Road in Norwich, a very ordinary little house in a row of terraces nestling in the sea of shoe factory workers houses between St Clements Hill and Angel Road, not far from Angel Road School. In the Picture above we have...

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Rephotography: Ghosting history

Rephotography: Ghosting history

I should of course have done a piece on the Ghosts stuff properly ages ago, but time passes and what one minute seems to be the important and interesting bit of whatever you're doing suddenly isn't as much as it was three or four years ago. The recent conservation of...

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City Station Norwich

City Station Norwich

A Blitz Ghost of the Portico of City Station, just at the bottom of Barn Road in Norwich being dismantled by one man and a hammer. The Station was bombed on the first night of the raids. Not built on entirely solid ground it was already cracked, the weight of brick on...

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A Dornier in a car park.

A Dornier in a car park.

Not something you see every day. This is the Norwich Dornier, a Do 17z Number U5 EA. The same one featured in various photos of Eaton Park in Norwich, Sitting there like a giant Airfix kit being winched onto a flat back. A German Dornier Do17z in bits in the car park...

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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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