Things to look at and read

Westlegate: The tall boy at the back

  I first met Westlegate tower in the 1970s, I would have been about seven or eight. It was just part of the background noise in a city where I had yet to link up all the parts. In 1975 it was just a place where my brother-in-law worked. And on a couple of...

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...

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: Tyne Cot

If and when you visit the Western Front, which a huge and growing number of people do partly because of the centenary and partly because you know, corner of a foreign field and all that family stuff, you are entering a piece of ground that is pretty much at the...

Lost in a landscape: Caistor St Edmund – A buried town

Five miles to the South East of the modern nucleus of Norwich sits Caistor St Edmund, on a rise in the land between the confluence of the River Tas and the River Yare near where the Wensum joins the "I'm the biggest River" bunfight and loses it pointlessly, it's just...

Lost in a landscape: Little Witchingham

There's a sea of barley, the horizon a shadowed thin night cloud line of trees. In the late afternoon heat this far from the coast there's no wind, no air sucked in by the heated land to move the thorned tops. Everything is calm. The summer hasn't advanced enough to...

Walking the past: St Georges Street – Part One

I’ve recently been trying to get back into the habit of walking again, going out at all if I’m honest. I started lockdown with no work and plenty of time and walked frequently, over the last 18 months the polarity has reversed, so I’ve had less time, and too many...

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...

Lost in a Landscape: Heigham Holmes

The weather window suddenly being kind, blue skies and a bit of a breeze over the flat lands of Norfolk. Living here, it’s easy to forget how lucky we are, the cliche of our vast skies gets lost as we all head off to places that have those curious walls of land all...

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...

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...

Tom Starling: Old Shuck – Salthouse into Kelling

Wonderful piece of Norfolk dialect from a well-spoken North Norfolk chap relating his brief but nervy meeting with Old Shuck just outside Salthouse towards Kelling; one of the various 'two masters' routes that relate to the North Norfolk version of the tale based...

Spitfire versus Hurricane

The workhorse and the charger. I lived in North Walsham as a kid. RAF Coltishall was only about 6 miles away. We all grew up with the English Electric Lightning; the cold-war emblems, a sliver flash glossily belting past on high, occasionally breaking the sound...

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...

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...

Lost in a Landscape: Walsingham and the wolves

I have amongst my detritus a book on Norfolk abbeys and friaries, it's a junk shop find from years ago. It dates from the 1950s and is extraordinarily complete for a slim tome, just enough background on everything to get you started without too much confusing detail,...

Vanishing point: Before endeavours fade

I'd been meaning to go to Holborn and take a photo of this chap for years. This is my grandfathers regimental memorial, he was in the 1st RF (of which I have already posted plenty), I collect these things for some reason I can't fathom. The memorial is a finely...

Black Dogs and Cats in Suffolk

Guest post from Francis Young From Francis Young, regarding Heveningham Hall and Moreton Hall near Bury St. Edmonds. Heveningham is an area of previous alleged sightings in the 1920s which include the mention of a clanking chain, it is one of the archetypal...

St Giles Street, Norwich

I've realised recently I rarely write about the city itself, or at least I don't on here. This is actually based on something I wrote for something that was a sort of outline history of St Giles in relation to a couple of properties. I found it recently while rooting...

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...

The Black Dog of Sculthorpe Moor

Guest post by Nick Headland A couple of Black dog tales, neither experienced first hand which is more-or-less how Folklore works and how it evolves. So much so that Nick pointed out in his message that if he asked the other people involved now the story would change,...

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...

The Black Dog of Bouley Bay

A guest post. This is actually an extract from Erren Michaels' new book on Jersey Legends which should be available very soon. It is available to pre-order here on the History Press website. On nights when the black dog roamed the hills of Bouley Bay people would lock...

Black Shuck of the Fens

Black Shuck of the Fens Guest post: Matthew Champion I have a confession to make. I was born on the edge of the fens. A child of the bleak, flat and desolate waste that sits on Norfolk's western boundary, between 'the Isle' and the cold North Sea. I'm not a true fen...

New Prints

A new series of both old and new photographs of Anglia Square, from 2009 when the car park was closed, the most recent 2026.

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: Kelling and Salthouse

Coasting: Kelling and Salthouse

Kelling and Salthouse The weather opened up and glimmered for 24 hours in between the crushing Atlantic low we seem to have chained together coming at us at the moment, so we went for a wander along the shingle between Kelling and Salthouse, a favourite spot of ours,...

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Lost in a landscape: Caistor St Edmund – A buried town

Lost in a landscape: Caistor St Edmund – A buried town

Five miles to the South East of the modern nucleus of Norwich sits Caistor St Edmund, on a rise in the land between the confluence of the River Tas and the River Yare near where the Wensum joins the "I'm the biggest River" bunfight and loses it pointlessly, it's just...

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Lost in a landscape: Godwick DMV

Lost in a landscape: Godwick DMV

There are literally, really, honestly hundreds of these sites in Norfolk, I'll do a post on them eventually. Godwick is one of my favourites; it's remote, a bit hidden up and not exactly populated by other wanderers. The vast majority of these DMVs (Deserted Medieval...

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Lost in a Landscape: RAF Happisburgh

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...

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Dead Cities: RAF Deopham Green

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...

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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

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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.

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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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Buy stuff

New Prints

A new series of both old and new photographs of Anglia Square, from 2009 when the car park was closed, the most recent 2026.

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.

Colour

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

Coasting

Photography from along the coast of East Anglia

Vanishing Points

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

Posters

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

Flatland

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

New Forms – City

Photographs of Norwich North taken from forever to 2023