Welsh Buildings
Welsh Buildings in Ruin:
It has taken many years of photographing for me to realise that what I photograph does actually fit into categories. My first ever black and white photographs were of old mining buildings and since then, almost accidental, I have continued to seek and photograph remote, derelict and hidden from view buildings in the Welsh countryside.
A place deserted. One can not be help wonder why and what will I find there? These images please me aesthetically and each have their own microcosm atmospheres and form part of a mental emotional diary of places photographed.
A PLACE DESERTED:
Welsh Ruins and Landscapes:
These are photographs of old wild Wales; its varied landscapes and ruins that scatter its green hills and valleys, its highways and byways, throughout the former county of Dyfed.
Included are vernacular farmhouses and cottages, ruined, dark and lowly, in remote locations or alongside major roads – their doors rotted, windows smashed – the remnants and belongings of previous occupants, their past lives, left to dust and dampen to fade, wither and decay.
The landscape itself reveals explicit visual records of former industries, particularly mining areas such as Cwmystwyth, Cwmsymlog and Cwmrheidol as well as scores of other smaller workings, have all had a profound influence on the landscape of Wales. Driving through Cwmyswyth lead mines one can not help but be moved by the grey slag heaps and stone ruins, the surrounding steep hills cut with deep seams and open caverns, the veins and scars of extensive and well trodden workings.
So many times I have found myself off the beaten track with my camera and tripod, high up in the hills of the Cambrian Mountains believing few could have walked these hills before me and then to discover, quite unexpectedly, perhaps beneath a small cluster of Scots’ Pine trees the few barren walls of a shepherd’s dwelling or alongside a mountain stream the remnants of machinery, abandoned and left to rust, once the mining industry had become unprofitable.
This collection is not intended as an extensive or conclusive record of Dyfeds’ lost heritage but as a visual excuse for the viewer to stand back and aside briefly and allow some time to remember our past in these once hostile counties. A time before roads were built and communication from village to village took days rather than seconds.
To visit photographs of ruined mansions throughout Wales please visit my sister website at