Things to look at and read

Hidden history: Myths – Tombland, Norwich and the Plague

It's odd where you end up in conversations, the same is true in a digital landscape as it is in an analogue one. In between the pictures of cats, the videos of fat people falling over and the flux of skulking, trolling and pixel-fist-waving/bumping that goes on in our...

Cambridgeshire 1963/64

One thing lock down has provided is time to review piles of old stuff I've accumulated over the last few years. Namely boxes of slides negatives and photos I pick up for a few quid here and there in junk shops, or get given occasionally. All rescues anyway, this one...

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...

Cambridge – persistence of memory

Persistence of memory My mum grew up here. Her and therefore my ancestors were here for hundreds of years working as maids and cleaners, labourers, cartmen, and brickies, laying the railways, further back pulling the root veg through the surface of the peaty soils to...

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...

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...

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...

SS Oriana from the 1960s

I've recently been given a huge number of slides, a real mixture of stuff which I'm now slowly working my way through. This pile came in a couple of huge bags from two friends, firstly Charlie, who gave me so many photos of stately homes from the 1980s I’m not sure...

Lost in a Landscape: Heigham Holmes

We went out on Sunday, for a saunter. The weather window suddenly being kind, blue skies and a bit of a breeze and the flat lands of Norfolk. It's easy really when you live here to forget how lucky we are, the cliche of our vast skies gets lost as we all head off to...

Vanishing points: The Bull Ring, Etaples

Etaples was one of the main base camps along the coast of Northern France, being a port, a lot of men, thousands of them would have disembarked here. Many more would have embarked. It was known as "The Bullring", as were most of the base camps, but this one was the...

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...

Hidden history: Under Paris

Last year we shared an hour of Halloween with 6 million dead Parisians in  l'Ossuaire Municipal or the Paris Catacombs, we know how to party. Twenty metres below the Place Denfert Rochero there are amazing, intricate piles of dead people dating as far back as late...

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.

Lost in a landscape: Bromholm Priory

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...

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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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