Visting the Lord Line Docks before they disappear forever
Sometimes in life you come across a location which you can't believe you never knew existed and scratch your head as to why you never photographed it. The Lord Line in Hull is one such place.
Being only a 60 mile drive away, 
The Lord Line buildings are arranged around an abandoned dock called St. Andrew's Dock. The dock is completely filled in with spoil and is overgrown. Water hasn't entered this dock in years by the looks of it.
A quick search on the interweb reveals that surprisingly, Lord Line was first established in 1949. (I would have expected this to be much earlier). The buildings were set up to accommodate Hull's fishing industry but eventually began to wind down in 1975 and completely closed in 1990.
A further research on the internet reveals that the buildings are revered in Hull by some and efforts to demolish the site have been met with resistance. I would expect that the area around the dock is prime real estate for very expensive apartments I will never be able to afford. Keeping the buildings doesn't seem like a realistic prospect to me.
This is set of our explore around the site not necessarily in chronological order:
The Offices
Up on the top floor in one of the buildings is this long and well lit office. I say office but not a lot is left so I'm assuming here it was an office....
Stairway Porn
I never realised until today how much I like shooting stairs. I think I may have an addiction because I came away with a lot of stair shots! Here's two....
I'll be back here sometime soon in the dark to wave lights at these stairs:
Dark and Derelict
Entering the first building of the three, we discovered this burnt out shell with the obligatory cock graffiti.
Shell
All that's left of the offices are timber frames and dust. Shortly after shooting this I had to exit the building to breath properly. I seem to be allergic to the dust in these places!
Sketchy Dock Gates
Moving from one building to the other it's possible to take a short cut over these dock gates. I did wonder whether it was wise such was the state of the timber! Pictured is
Insurance Buildings
In front of this insurance building is a recently installed memorial dedicated to the 6000 fishermen who lost their lives at sea in pursuit of their livelihood. It seems to me that this building would have been the busiest of the lot and maybe not a viable business with that many lives lost!
Graff
As we climbed the stairs in the next building, we spotted this familiar graff piece. If I'm correct this a piece by Colorati, prolific in Sheffield. Luckily there was another way to climb higher up since this way looked a bit sketchy.
Love hate relationship
In these buildings there was a fair amount of graffiti although none of it was up to the same standards I've seen elsewhere. This was about the best I saw on the visit.
More stair porn
I spent way too much time today hanging around these stairs!
Lightpainting switchgear
I found this room full of electrical switchgear. Normally I would turn up to a location with bags full of lights for lightpainting but on this occassion I only had one RGB LED panel. I improvised and placed the light to camera left and hoped for the best.
Brick
Looking from within one building over the yard to the other.
Up on the roof
I'm not scared of heights but I was very wary with no barriers of any kind up on the roof. Falling off never ends well!
Light Well
Despite thinking these buildings were older than 1949, up on the roof is this triangular structure allowing light to enter the lower floors. I can't remember seeing this kind of feature in older industrial buildings so 1949 seems right having seen this.
And looking across St. Andrew's Dock, this is the rear of the Insurance Building:
And finally....
On our way out of the site, I couldn't resist whipping my iPhone and shooting a panorama. Camera phones still impress me.....
Shortly after this we checked to see if Mr. Chu's All you Can Eat Buffet was open but sadly we had to resort to a McDonald's for Sunday lunch! (And luckily my car was still intact and not on a pile of bricks!)
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to create art.
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