Ashton Moss

Brief return trip to Ashton Moss. Weather more favourable, bright and sunny. It was early afternoon (1.30 p.m.) and the sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the fields. The whole area looked much more welcoming, and nowhere near as desolate, than on my previous visit. I shot off 1¾ rolls of film concentrating on Albert Hulme's Estate.

1 - 6 Rayner Lane, Ashton Moss. Since I was last here someone's bent the sign and the gate has been chained up and padlocked. Pity I didn't notice the radio masts growing out of the gatepost when I took these photos.

8 - 9 To get these photo's I just walked by the side of the gatepost and shot a couple of frames looking down the track. Rayner Lane runs at right angles to this track i.e. from where the photographs were taken. The low sun was beginning to cause problems, by casting long shadows across the track.

I desperately wanted to walk further down the track and photograph the hut at the end of it, but without permission to do so I resisted the temptation.

It was here that I met the only person I'd seen. An elderly man walking his dog. Seeing my tripod he thought I was surveying the line of the motorway. When I explained that I wasn't, and asked him if he knew where it would run, he gesticulated with his arms, waving his stick about, vaguely indicating a diagonal line across the Moss. "From the corner of Snipe under Manchester Road in a cutting to Daisy Nook" he eventually said.

What would happen to the Market Gardeners I said. He said he didn't know, and then began bemoaning the rundown state of the area, compared with how it used to be, with well laid out fields and well kept fields and hedges. "It used to be a joy to walk down here" he said as an afterthought, before turning to go.

11 - 12 Albert Hulme's estate from Rayner Lane. Dividing his land from Rayner Lane is a drainage ditch and a ridge of earth - these photographs were taken from this hence the slightly elevated position. Unfortunately, the buildings are rather distant.

The land is well maintained and has been carefully farmed. The appearance is of a more tidy and well organised estate than most of the others on the Moss.

14 - 18 Between where I took these photos and Nos. 11 & 12, there is a well secured wooden gate which barrs the way to Albert Hulme's sheds and greenhouses. These photographs were taken from a continuation of the ridge which separated his land from Rayner Lane. The fields looked rich and fertile, the soil black and loamy.

3.5F camera.

Agfapan 100 (80 ASA) Rodinal 1:60. 10 minutes at 68°F.

<span class="wrapper"><p>Work Print</p> <p>Negative c7/1/3/9</p> <p>Work Print c7/3/3/9</p> <p>CH : 550 mm</p> <p>Exposure : F22 at 22s</p> <p>Paper : G2 (G)</p> <p>Comments : More or less a straight print, just a small margin cropped off the bottom of the negative. I didn't like the heavy shadows - and the right-hand side to get rid of those air-bubble marks, the results of over enthusiastic agitation of the developing tank during the processing of the film.</p> <p>The skyline is dominated by two radio masts, the foreground by a well made dirt track. In the middle of the track a small grassy verge has begun to grow.</p></span>