'Why Not Sample The Delights Of Atmospheric Faircharm?'

All Images: Faircharm Trading Estate, Southwest Leicester, May 2016

For me, a major pleasure of living in a city is that moment when you suddenly discover a pleasing tract of unfamiliar new territory that’s been under your nose all along. It’s something that often occurs when one deviates slightly from a familiar beaten track, and is, I suppose, made possible by the fractal complexity of the densely built, historically layered environment.  Thus it was for me, just the other day.

I was late climbing onto my bike saddle this year, mostly due to the generally disappointing nature of much of the weather, so far.  I can cycle in the cold, - anyone can with enough layered clothing, but there’s no denying that much of the pleasure of cycling is stripped away by buffeting wind and driving rain.  I’m not one of those adrenalised characters who gets-off on challenges to my physical endurance, and I don’t really need to find new routes to discomfort.  Frustratingly, once the climate did perk up sufficiently to tempt me out on two wheels, - my perennial knee problems quickly reappeared to remind me of my physical limitations all over again.

Despite that, (and as I say every year now), it still feels too soon to just give up trying altogether - even if that means reducing the speed/distances I can achieve; pacing the reintroduction of my rides in a more measured fashion; or just seeking the next level of medical intervention.  For that reason, when I ventured back out the other day, I was very consciously in pottering-with-the-camera mode, and of a mind to explore my immediate environs - rather than to even pretend I was in for the long haul.  The photos you see here all result from a minor deviation from a very familiar route, and a little time spent nosing around a small trading estate in Leicester that I’ve always known was there, - but had never bothered to explore properly.

I don’t need to explain my slightly eccentric relish for such mundane, workaday environments, do I? - Not to regular visitors, at least.  In fact, I did have the excuse of researching the location of a potential picture framer, but the whole exercise soon became one of purely hanging around and absorbing the intrinsic qualities of a new place.  That whole ‘Sense of Place’ idea was one that used to get talked about a lot when I was a student and remains central to the way I experience the world, and at the core of much of my art work.

As such places go, Faircharm Trading Estate, (what a name!), differs from the standard grid of anonymous, purely functional brick or corrugated steel boxes, normally implied by the term.  Instead, it’s a far more irregular cluster of pleasingly dilapidated, generally older buildings, on either bank of a minor tributary canal.  The site once lay adjacent to a railway line, but that is now transformed into a cycle/foot/bridle path on the fringes of a riverside park.  It’s accessed via minor back roads – and has a distinctly semi-rural, Edgelands flavour.

Having quickly located the framing business I was looking for, I ventured across the site’s canal bridge, and further into the complex of (mostly) several-story buildings.  Many spoke of Leicester’s once-energetic manufacturing heritage, and most implied a story of repeated change of use.  The current situation is one of numerous opportunistic, small-to-medium enterprises, making do with shabby, but I assume, affordable accommodation.  The layout creates a succession of sub-spaces, - each with its own distinct atmosphere, from sun-lit piazza to dank, vaguely Dickensian corners.  More practically minded visitors, - perhaps on a day less favourably blessed with golden sunlight, might struggle to fathom the appeal of all this.  However, I find I can lurk around such locations for ages, - just soaking up the resonances.  All that picturesque entropy is too delicious to ignore, as is the plentiful evidence of changing usage, or of commercial activity - both old and new.  Once again, regular readers probably won’t be too surprised by such enthusiasms, and I guess you either get it or you don’t.

Inevitably, having recorded a few general vistas, my camera soon zoomed in on some of the finer, nominally inconsequential details.  Amongst these were a few pleasing bits of signage and fragments, (or revenants) of text, and an always irresistible smidgeon of hazard tape.  But the real treasure was a marvelous selection of blind or whited-out windows.  Again, such motifs are hardly unknown on my hard drive (or on here), but I can never get enough of this kind of stuff, - and some of these really were gorgeous.  They speak directly to my current fascination with notions of lost voices, forgotten meanings, abandoned activities, failed communications, and good old entropy.  And, of course, they also chime perfectly with my love of grids and formal geometries; and with that whole variation-within-a-standard-model routine.

You know, - all the usual good stuff…