Here is a small selection of
additional photos from my recent trips out with the camera. All of the locations are within easy
reach of the burned-out Donisthorpe Factory featured in my last post. These images were found serendipitously
on my cycle trips out to document its sorry remains. As so often happens, my lens closed in on physical material,
text fragments and architectural detail.
Most were taken in an area
of Leicester, known as Blackfriars. It lies close to my home between the
River Soar and the wonderfully named Frog Island and appears to have always been somewhat intermediate in character. It’s hardly pretty or glamorous but fascinates me for its
wealth of visual texture and visible strata of history. As the name suggests, it was once the
site of an Dominican religious house and later, of the impressive Great
Central Railway station.
Donisthorpe’s Friars Mills factory was only one of several in the area
that are now lost. The zone now
hosts a mixture of scruffy small to medium businesses scattered amongst areas
of ad hoc car parks and open ground and derelict edifices putatively earmarked for redevelopment.
The current recession and
bursting of the property bubble have seen several grand redevelopment plans
collapse and as a result, the whole area seems to be holding its breath caught
between a fast receding industrial past and an uncertain future. Meanwhile, the car breakers and
sprayers still fill the monumental railway arches with noise and cellulose
fumes, bulldozers pulverise old brickwork, paint falls from neglected doors and
urban philosophers pose questions in graffiti.
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