Blackpool, Lancashire
Simon Hill HonFRPS for The North Revisited
The North
When The Sunday Times Magazine commissioned photojournalist John Bulmer FRPS to document life in the industrial centres of the north of England, it was a time when northern society and culture was undergoing a vast transformation. Traditional industries - coal, steel, textiles, engineering - had been the wealth creators of the Industrial Revolution but they were now in a rapid and relentless decline. The hard times etched on the faces of John’s subjects told of a life of incredible struggle and hardship framed against a bleak industrial background. These were people forgotten as the ‘Swinging Sixties’ changed the cultural landscape of Britain.
On 28 March 1965 the magazine published a Special Issue devoted to ‘The North’ and it was John’s photographs that appeared on the cover and across 13 pages. John later reflected on the significance of this Special Issue, “I was very used to working in colour, but also very aware that no serious professional had photographed the industrial North in colour before.”
The Sunday Times Magazine
Special Issue: The North
28 March 1965
The North
by John Bulmer FRPS
Bluecoat Press, 2012
Revisited
Marking the sixtieth anniversary of The Sunday Times Magazine 1965 Special Issue on 'The North', in 2025 Arts Council England (ACE) provided the major funding for a year-long project in which editorial and documentary photographer Simon Hill HonFRPS built on the work of John Bulmer FRPS, whose evocative images of the north of England made in the 1960s have proved to be a cornerstone of British documentary photography.
John Bulmer FRPS and Simon Hill HonFRPS at the opening of John's exhibition 'Northern Light' at Hartlepool Art Gallery, 26 January 2024
Over the course of the The North Revisited project, Simon visited the 16 northern towns and cities visited by John (shown below in CAPITALS) plus an additional 20 to provide a more complete photo-documentary coverage of the 'The North'. During the project additional opportunities were identified and these are shown with an asterisk (*) expanding the total number of locations to around 50:
Northumberland Ashington
Tyne & Wear NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Durham Durham, HARTLEPOOL (and *Seaton Carew), Peterlee, Horden, DAWDON, WALDRIDGE
Cumbria WHITEHAVEN, Barrow in Furness, *Appleby, *Lakeland (Grasmere / Keswick / Wasdale)
Lancashire Blackpool, Blackburn, Burnley, NELSON, Preston
Cheshire WARRINGTON, *Jodrell Bank
West Yorkshire BRADFORD, LEEDS, HALIFAX, HUDDERSFIELD, Wakefield, *Rothwell, *Gawthorpe, *Hebden Bridge
North Yorkshire *Harrogate, Middlesborough, Scarborough, Whitby, *Appletreewick, *Boulby, *Malham
South Yorkshire BARNSLEY, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield
East Riding of Yorkshire Hull (Kingston upon Hull)
Greater Manchester Bolton, MANCHESTER, OLDHAM, Rochdale, SALFORD, Stockport, Wigan, *Longsight
Merseyside LIVERPOOL
Motorways* M1, M6, M60 and M62
The North Revisited will be exhibited in venues across the North of England and in May 2026 the book of the project will be published by Image & Reality as a companion volume to John's 'The North'. The project was managed by Harriet Kendal-Greene.
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Simon Hill working on The North Revisited
Top Preston Middle (upper) Nelson Middle (lower) Barrow-in-Furness Bottom Jodrell Bank
Photographs by Ruth Emily Hanson ARPS
Photographs
Below is a small selection of the more than 4000 photographs taken during the project. Locations shown in CAPITALS were originally visited by John Bulmer FRPS in the 1960s and are now revisited by Simon Hill HonFRPS; other locations are those included in the Arts Council England (ACE) funded project commission while those shown with an asterisk (*) were added to the scope during the course of the project. Locations are arranged in alphabetical order.
Appleby*
Appleby Horse Fair, one of the oldest and most iconic gatherings of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities in Europe, offers a vivid expression of living tradition and cultural resilience. Held annually in the Cumbrian town of Appleby-in-Westmorland, the fair has evolved over the past 60 years from a relatively low-profile, community-focused event into a major public spectacle attracting thousands of visitors, media scrutiny, and at times controversy. Yet at its heart, it remains a celebration of identity, heritage, and continuity amidst social change.
The fair is a powerful subject within The North Revisited project; documenting the fair through contemporary photography aligns with the project’s ambition to look beyond surface impressions and engage with the complex, often overlooked realities of northern life, where tradition and transformation exist side by side.
Appletreewick*
Appletreewick, a small village nestled in the Yorkshire Dales, hosts the quirky and much-loved events of ferret racing and terrier racing that capture the eccentric charm and deep-rooted communal spirit of rural northern life. These events, organised by The Craven Arms public house, are more than light-hearted entertainment; they reflect traditions passed down through generations, a sense of humour and resilience, and a collective identity shaped by place and pride.
By photographing such intimate, grassroots celebrations, The North Revisited project aims to highlight the rich textures of northern culture that persist outside the spotlight; authentic, characterful, and defiantly local in a fast-changing world.
Barrow in Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is a town shaped by its industrial heritage, built on shipbuilding, steel, and engineering that once made it one of Britain’s most important manufacturing centres. Today, it exists largely in the shadow of BAE Systems, whose submarine programme dominates the local economy, even as offshore wind turbines now generate electricity just beyond the coast and signal a tentative shift toward renewable energy.
While these developments bring some opportunity, the town remains heavily dependent on a narrow employment base, leaving many young people facing limited career paths or the need to move away. Investment in the coastal path and surrounding landscapes is encouraging tourism and new ways of engaging with the town, but social isolation and underinvestment persist.
Within The North Revisited project, Barrow-in-Furness represents a complex post-industrial reality: a place where national strategic importance sits alongside local fragility, and where the future of northern communities is closely tied to questions of diversification, resilience, and identity.
Blackburn
Blackburn is a town shaped by a strong industrial heritage rooted in cotton manufacturing, whose mills once powered both its economy and civic identity. Today, it is a far more demographically complex place, with a large and predominantly British Pakistani population that has reshaped its cultural, religious, and social landscape over recent decades.
While this diversity brings vitality and new forms of community life, it has also exposed deep challenges around segregation, economic inequality, and social cohesion, often intensified by deprivation and a lack of shared public space. In this environment, resentment and disaffection have at times made Blackburn fertile ground for far-right activity, exploiting divisions and anxieties rather than addressing their underlying causes.
The North Revisited project presents Blackburn as a nuanced and necessary story - one that confronts uncomfortable realities while seeking to understand how post-industrial towns navigate identity, belonging, and coexistence in a changing North.
Blackpool
Blackpool, with its dazzling lights, amusement arcades, and iconic seafront attractions, remains a symbol of traditional British seaside tourism; yet its glitzy façade masks a deeper narrative of economic decline and social hardship. Once a booming holiday destination for working-class northerners, the town now grapples with some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country, a contrast that underscores the layered complexity of life in the North.
The North Revisited seeks to capture this tension, revealing how places like Blackpool embody both the enduring appeal of popular culture and the harsh realities of post-industrial change. By documenting this coexistence of spectacle and struggle, the project offers a more honest, empathetic, and multidimensional portrait of the region.
Bolton
Bolton is a town shaped by a powerful industrial legacy, once at the heart of Lancashire’s cotton and engineering industries, a past that still looms large in its streets and civic spaces. Landmarks such as Le Mans Crescent and Bolton Market sit within a townscape where the scale and drama of former industry continue to capture the imagination - especially for children, who marvel at the stories, structures, and machines that once defined everyday life.
This heritage is celebrated not only in museums and architecture but also through an iconic mural painted on a town-centre wall, vividly depicting Bolton’s industrial past as a source of pride rather than loss. While the town continues to face economic and social challenges in the post-industrial era, these visible reminders of history anchor community identity.
Within The North Revisited project, Bolton becomes a place where memory, education, and place-making intersect, showing how the industrial North still shapes how new generations understand where they come from and what the future might hold.
Boulby Mine*
Boulby Mine, perched on the cliffs of the North Yorkshire coast, carries forward the North’s proud tradition of deep mining while pointing firmly toward the future. Still a working polyhalite and rock salt mine, it descends over 1,100 metres below ground and hosts the Boulby Underground Laboratory - an internationally significant research centre exploring dark matter, astrobiology, and planetary science in a uniquely shielded environment.
This remarkable convergence of industrial heritage and scientific innovation speaks directly to the ambition of The North Revisited project to reveal a region shaped by its past but redefined by its capacity for cultural renewal, intellectual ambition, and forward-looking transformation.
Burnley
Burnley, once a thriving cotton-mill town, now ranks among the most deprived areas in England, with over half its neighbourhoods in the worst decile of deprivation and over a third of all children living in poverty. Issues including fuel poverty, low wages, drug and alcohol addiction, and mental health struggles are widespread.
At the heart of the community response is Pastor Mick Fleming and Church on the Street (COTS), which began with simple street outreach and has grown into a vital support network offering food, clothing, counselling, recovery programmes, and free funerals. Its work - grounded in compassion and direct action - speaks to the ambition of The North Revisited ... to portray the often-unseen realities of northern life, where hardship is met with dignity, resilience, and hope.
Durham
Durham, with its cathedral and castle rising above the River Wear, is now internationally associated with the Miners’ Gala - known locally as The Big Meet - an annual gathering that celebrates the proud history of the Durham coalfield. Each summer, brass bands, union banners, and former mining communities march through the city, transforming its medieval streets into a living expression of working-class solidarity, memory, and political voice. Rooted in the coal mining industry that once defined the region’s economy and identity, the Miners' Gala continues as a powerful act of remembrance long after the pits were closed.
The North Revisited project uses the Miners’ Gala as a vivid symbol of how industrial heritage continues to shape the cultural life of the North, revealing a city where history is not confined to museums but carried forward through collective ritual and pride.
Gawthorpe*
Gawthorpe, a former coal-mining village in West Yorkshire, hosts the World Coal Carrying Championships each Easter Monday, where competitors race over 1km carrying heavy coal sacks - 50 kg for men, 20 kg for women. What began as a pub dare in 1963 has become a celebrated annual event, complete with veterans’ and children’s races, and timed with traditional pigeon-racing clocks. Though the local collieries closed decades ago, the race honours the village’s industrial past, turning physical endurance into a living tribute.
For The North Revisited, this event captures how northern communities preserve heritage through tradition, keeping memory and identity alive in the post-industrial landscape.
Harrogate*
Harrogate, the elegant spa town of North Yorkshire, rose to prominence through the mineral-rich wells of the Valley Gardens, whose reputed healing properties attracted visitors from across Britain and brought lasting prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries. This legacy of refinement and civic pride continues today, even as the town’s identity has evolved beyond spa tourism.
Harrogate is now closely associated with the Great Yorkshire Show, one of the country’s most important agricultural events, reinforcing its role as a meeting point for rural tradition and modern life. Less visibly, but just as significantly, the nearby Army Foundation College has made the town a key centre for military training, with young recruits and veterans alike taking a central role in Harrogate’s annual Remembrance Day parade and commemoration in the town centre.
Within The North Revisited project, Harrogate offers a nuanced portrait of the modern North - where heritage, agriculture, military service, and civic ritual combine to shape a place that is both historically grounded and socially contemporary.
HARTLEPOOL & Seaton Carew*
Hartlepool and the neighbouring seaside town of Seaton Carew are deeply rooted in maritime and industrial history, shaped by shipbuilding, fishing, and heavy engineering along the North Sea coast.
While Hartlepool’s docks once supported a thriving shipbuilding industry, Seaton Carew has more recently played a significant role in the dismantling and salvage of oil and gas rigs, reflecting a shift from traditional maritime trades to specialist industrial recycling and decommissioning. Since the 1960s, both places have faced the challenges common to the post-industrial North - job losses, economic decline, and social deprivation following the contraction of heavy industry.
Yet their continued connection to the sea and evolving industrial roles highlight resilience and adaptation, offering The North Revisited project a compelling lens through which to explore how coastal communities have navigated change while remaining anchored to their working maritime identities.
Hebden Bridge*
Hebden Bridge, once a Pennine mill town rooted in textile industry, has over recent decades reinvented itself as a bohemian cultural centre and a nationally recognised LGBTQ+ hub, particularly known as a stronghold of lesbian community in the North. Its independent shops, creative life, and progressive politics are complemented by events such as vintage car rallies and Victorian weekends, which celebrate local heritage while injecting new energy into the town.
Central to this transformation is the Calder Valley railway line and Hebden Bridge station, whose frequent connections to Manchester, Leeds, and beyond have been vital in sustaining the town’s revival - making it possible for residents, visitors, and creatives to live, work, and travel without isolation, and linking a small town to wider cultural and economic networks.
This connectivity, inclusivity, and heritage-led renewal speaks directly to the ambition of The North Revisited project, highlighting how northern towns can reinvent themselves through culture, access, and community resilience.
Horden
Horden, in East Durham, reflects the deep scars left by coal-mine closures; once a thriving pit village, it has faced severe decline since the colliery closed in 1987. With nearly 40 % of residents living in poverty, streets lined with boarded-up homes, and high levels of crime, drug and alcohol addiction, and poor health, the village exemplifies the long-term impact of deindustrialisation. Yet amid the hardship, local initiatives like the Coalfields Regeneration Trust’s Hub House offer crucial support through the provision of mental health services, food pantries, and youth programmes.
For The North Revisited, Horden offers a stark but vital subject - revealing both the visible dereliction and the quieter resilience of a community still fighting to have a future.
HUDDERSFIELD
Huddersfield has undergone profound change over the past 60 years, shifting from a town defined by textile mills and manufacturing to one grappling with post-industrial decline, economic restructuring, and evolving social challenges. The loss of traditional industries brought unemployment and deprivation to parts of the town, while demographic change and underinvestment have reshaped its communities and town centre.
Yet amid this transition, Huddersfield Town AFC has remained a powerful and unifying force, its history and match-day rituals continuing to galvanise civic pride and a shared sense of identity across generations. The club’s presence offers continuity in a landscape of change, reminding the town of its collective resilience and belonging.
This enduring relationship between place, people, and sport speaks directly to the ambition of The North Revisited project, capturing how northern communities adapt and endure, finding meaning and cohesion even as the economic and social ground beneath them shifts.
Jodrell Bank*
Jodrell Bank Observatory stands as one of the North’s most iconic scientific landmarks, dominated by the Lovell Telescope whose vast white dish has become a symbol of British astrophysics. Home to the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), the site has played a crucial role in advancing radio astronomy, space exploration, and our understanding of the universe.
The Lovell Telescope, listed Grade I in 1988 in recognition of its engineering and scientific importance, anchors a landscape that was granted UNESCO World Heritage status in 2019 for its global significance to science. Located within a web of North West infrastructure, Jodrell Bank is both rooted in place and outward-looking in ambition.
For The North Revisited project, it stands as a powerful emblem of the North’s contribution to global knowledge - challenging narratives of post-industrial decline by foregrounding intellectual achievement, innovation, and scientific leadership.
Lakeland* (Keswick, Grasmere, Wasdale)
The annual agricultural and sporting shows of the Lake District are enduring expressions of Lakeland life, rooted in centuries of farming, shepherding, and rural competition while remaining firmly part of the modern cultural calendar.
In Grasmere, the famous Sports and Show brings together Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, fell running, and traditional games, preserving physical traditions that grew directly from upland labour and local rivalry. Keswick’s produce and livestock shows celebrate farming, horticulture, and rural skills, adapting long-standing agricultural customs for a contemporary audience of locals and visitors alike. The Wasdale Shepherds’ Meet, one of the oldest of its kind, has origins in medieval hiring fairs and remains a deeply authentic gathering of hill farmers, fell runners, and families, set against one of England’s most dramatic landscapes.
Today, these shows balance heritage with spectacle, attracting tourists while sustaining local identity and knowledge. Their inclusion in The North Revisited project is justified as they reveal a North where tradition is not static but performed, renewed, and shared - demonstrating how rural culture continues to evolve while remaining anchored to place, history, and community.
LEEDS
Leeds, a dynamic and rapidly growing city at the heart of West Yorkshire, today stands as a vibrant symbol of diversity, inclusion, and cultural confidence; nowhere more visible than in its annual Pride event. Leeds Pride, the largest in Yorkshire, transforms the city centre into a joyful celebration of LGBTQ+ identity, drawing tens of thousands of participants and spectators in a show of solidarity that would have been unthinkable in the socially conservative North at the time of John Bulmer's photography. The event speaks powerfully to the social and cultural transformation of the region, reflecting changing attitudes and the embrace of difference as part of a shared civic identity.
For The North Revisited, Leeds Pride offers a vivid opportunity to portray a modern North that is not only more diverse and open, but also proud of its progress; celebrating how far it has come and challenging outdated stereotypes of northern life.
LIVERPOOL
Liverpool is a city forged by the sea, its maritime heritage and historic port shaping centuries of trade, empire, and immigration that brought Irish, African, Caribbean, and many other communities through its docks, profoundly influencing the city’s culture and identity.
This layered history sits alongside a modern reputation as a vibrant destination for hen nights, stag parties, and birthday celebrations, where music, nightlife, and humour remain central to civic character. Iconic sites such as the Cavern Club and the enduring legacy of The Beatles continue to anchor Liverpool’s global cultural presence, while striking contemporary architecture rises beside grand historic buildings, reflecting a city comfortable with contrast and reinvention. Yet Liverpool also faces ongoing challenges, including episodes of far-right, anti-immigration protest that expose tensions around identity, inequality, and belonging.
Within The North Revisited project, Liverpool stands as a complex and compelling portrait of the modern North - international, creative, celebratory, and contested - where history, diversity, and contradiction coexist in full view.
Longsight*
Longsight, just south of Manchester city centre, faces entrenched poverty and severe social challenges; almost half of all children live in relative poverty and over two-thirds of households suffer deprivation in at least one dimension, well above city averages. The area grapples with housing insecurity, fuel poverty, overcrowding, damp and substandard private rentals, along with rising crime and public neglect.
Amid this hardship, the Ardwick and Longsight Food Bank - run by local volunteers and linked to nearby community churches - provides emergency food parcels and tailored support, serving those who would barely have considered food banks in the 1960s when such infrastructure didn’t even exist.
Highlighting this support effort speaks directly to the ambition of The North Revisited, documenting how contemporary northern communities navigate poverty not only through struggle but through new forms of care and collective resilience born in more recent decades.
Malham*
Malham is a small but iconic village in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, set within a landscape of dramatic limestone scenery that includes Malham Cove, Gordale Scar, and the limestone pavements of Malham Tarn. Despite having a permanent population of only around 200 people, the village attracts vast numbers of tourists and day trippers drawn by its natural beauty, well-marked footpaths, and easy access to some of the most striking geology in northern England.
The wider Yorkshire Dales National Park plays a crucial role in protecting this landscape while ensuring public access to open countryside, reflecting the growing importance of national parks and access land in everyday life. In the 2020s, tourism is not an occasional intrusion but a constant presence, shaping local economies, infrastructure, and community rhythms in ways that would have been far less pronounced in the 1960s.
Malham’s inclusion in The North Revisited project is justified as a reminder that the modern North is defined not only by industry and cities, but by landscapes where conservation, access, and tourism are now central to lived experience.
MANCHESTER
Manchester stands as a powerful symbol of a reimagined northern city - bold, creative, and full of potential. Once a heartland of the Industrial Revolution, it has transformed itself into a centre of innovation, culture, and economic regeneration, with a thriving music and arts scene, world-class universities, and ambitious investment in architecture, media, and technology. While inequality and deprivation still persist in parts of the city, its overall trajectory reflects a confident, outward-looking urban identity that challenges outdated notions of northern decline.
The North Revisited highlights Manchester not just as a place of historic significance, but as a living example of the North’s capacity to reinvent itself, energised by diversity, driven by ambition, and reshaping what it means to be a northern city in the 21st century.
Motorways* (M1, M6, M60, M62, A1M)
The motorway network is one of the most visible transformations of the northern landscape since John Bulmer photographed for 'The North' in the early 1960s, reshaping how industry, energy, and everyday life connect across the region.
Routes such as the M1 (Britain’s first full-length motorway) and the M6 (the main north-south artery marked by The Pennine Tower at Lancaster Services) have become vital conduits linking former industrial heartlands, while the M62 crosses the Pennines at the highest motorway point in England, symbolising east-west connection on an epic scale.
The M60 encircles Manchester, binding once-distinct towns into a single urban system, and the A1(M) continues the evolution of an ancient route into a modern high-speed corridor. Along the M1 near Sheffield, E.ON’s Blackburn Meadows Renewable Energy Plant stands as a contemporary landmark, generating heat and power from recycled wood for local businesses and homes, replacing the silhouette of the cooling towers of the former Tinsley coal-fired power station and signalling the city’s transition toward decarbonisation.
Including these motorways and their associated landmarks in The North Revisited project acknowledges how movement and energy networks now define the modern North - revealing a landscape shaped by connection, sustainability, and reinvention as much as by its industrial past.
NELSON
Nelson, a former Lancashire mill town, is now predominantly home to a British‑Pakistani community, making up over 50% of residents (by the 2021 Census), while the white population has declined to slightly more than 40%, transforming its cultural landscape in ways unimaginable in the 1960s.
Once powered by textile factories, Nelson now grapples with economic decline, shop closures, linguistic isolation, and weak town identity despite a £25 million regeneration fund as part of a New Town Deal. Through creative initiatives like the This Is Nelson programme - inviting artists and young people to reimagine public spaces and cultural infrastructure - the town is exploring new ways to reclaim community cohesion and pride.
The North Revisited aims to provide a snapshot of this pivotal transition; offering a portrait of a post-industrial North where former mill towns like Nelson are redefining their future through diversity, creativity, and a renewed sense of identity.
OLDHAM
Oldham in the mid-2020s presents a vivid example of a northern town on the cusp of transformation, where the heritage of textile mills meets a bold reinvention rooted in arts, investment, and community. Events like Illuminate Oldham, the borough’s annual light‑trail festival, draw thousands with community-made lantern parades, immersive installations and local performances that celebrate its cultural diversity and forge a renewed sense of civic pride.
Meanwhile, under the Building a Better Oldham regeneration programme, the Council is delivering over 2,000 new homes, cultural venues like the restored Coliseum Theatre, new markets such as the Egyptian Room food hall, and 1,000 jobs and apprenticeships tied to redevelopments like Spindles and Northern Roots eco‑park.
The North Revisited spotlights these changes - not ignoring persistent inequality, but portraying Oldham as a story of reinvention; a town emerging from industrial decline into a culturally vibrant, economically ambitious future.
Peterlee
Peterlee in County Durham, founded in 1948 as a post-war “New Town”, was named after the miners’ leader Peter Lee, making it the only town in the UK named after a trade unionist. Built to provide better housing for local mining families, Peterlee now faces significant social and economic challenges, including persistent deprivation, underinvestment, and tensions around the use of poor-quality housing for vulnerable groups such as asylum seekers. Yet the town retains a strong sense of identity, expressed through its mining heritage, restored lodge banners, and the modernist Apollo Pavilion by Victor Pasmore, an enduring symbol of post-war optimism.
The North Revisited project focuses a lens on Peterlee as a community still navigating the legacy of deindustrialisation while holding on to its working-class pride and cultural resilience.
Preston
Preston, Lancashire, is a city rich in cultural diversity and marked by ongoing social and economic challenges. Once a major industrial centre, it has transformed into a vibrant, multicultural community with a significant South Asian population that shapes its cultural identity. The University of Central Lancashire plays a key role in driving economic growth and cultural development, while initiatives like the Preston Model promote local wealth building through community-focused procurement and cooperative business strategies.
Despite these positive developments, areas such as Fishwick continue to face issues including antisocial behaviour and drug use, leading to efforts to improve public safety and community wellbeing.
The North Revisited highlights Preston as a city that embraces its historic roots while actively working towards a more inclusive, diverse, and resilient future.
Rotherham
Rotherham has experienced profound social and economic change since the 1960s, shifting from a town defined by steelmaking and heavy industry to one grappling with post-industrial decline, unemployment, and long-term deprivation. The loss of major employers has contributed to a weakened town centre, marked by empty shops and reduced footfall, even as new forms of life have emerged through ethnic markets and independent businesses that reflect a more diverse population shaped by decades of migration and demographic change.
While this diversity has enriched the town culturally, it has also brought challenges around inequality, integration, and shared civic identity. Community events such as Bonfire Night, however - with its fairground rides, food wagons and fireworks - offer moments of collective gathering, where residents from different backgrounds come together in shared public space, reinforcing a sense of belonging beyond division.
The North Revisited project engages with Rotherham as a complex, honest portrait of the modern North - acknowledging hardship and change while seeking out the everyday rituals and spaces where community is continually being renegotiated and sustained.
Rothwell
Rothwell, a historic town near Leeds, sits at the heart of the now-famous West Yorkshire 'Rhubarb Triangle' a unique agricultural area renowned for its production of forced rhubarb, a practice dating back to the 19th century. Central to this heritage is the company of E. Oldroyd & Sons Ltd, a family-run business established in 1930, which remains one of the few commercial growers still using traditional methods - cultivating rhubarb in dark, heated forcing sheds and harvesting by candlelight to preserve the plant’s delicate flavour and colour. Once a booming industry that supplied markets across Europe, forced rhubarb production has declined, but in Rothwell it continues to thrive as both a cultural and economic symbol of local pride.
The North Revisited project highlights this enduring tradition not only as a story of heritage, but as a remarkable example of rural economic success and regional identity, where time-honoured practices adapt and persist in the face of wider industrial change.
Salford
Salford - within Greater Manchester - is a city of striking contrasts, steeped in working-class heritage yet undergoing significant transformation. Iconic landmarks like the Salford Lads Club, immortalised by The Smiths in the 1980s, speak to its deep cultural roots and enduring identity. Today, major infrastructure investment by Transport for Greater Manchester, including new tram routes and improved connectivity, has helped stimulate economic growth, particularly around MediaCityUK and Salford Quays. Yet many areas of Salford continue to face serious socio-economic challenges, including child poverty, housing insecurity, and limited access to services.
The North Revisited project turns its lens on Salford to explore this layered reality - capturing a city where cultural legacy, regeneration, and persistent hardship exist side by side, offering a compelling portrait of the North in flux.
Scarborough
Scarborough, on the North Yorkshire coast, is a town shaped by both its maritime heritage and the shifting fortunes of tourism. Once sustained by a thriving fishing industry, Scarborough has seen that sector drastically reduced, leaving the town increasingly reliant on a seasonal tourist economy that brings bursts of activity but little long-term stability.
With high levels of unemployment, underinvestment, and social deprivation in some neighbourhoods, Scarborough faces serious socio-economic challenges. Yet its strong sense of community endures, symbolised by the annual New Year’s Day Swim, where hundreds brave the icy North Sea to raise money for local charities - a moment of generosity and shared spirit amid adversity.
The North Revisited project highlights Scarborough as a place of contrasts: a town of beauty and hardship, tradition and resilience, where the realities of coastal life in the modern North are made strikingly visible.
Sheffield
Sheffield has undergone sweeping social and economic change since the 1960s, moving from its identity as a global centre of steel production to a city negotiating the long aftermath of industrial collapse, inequality, and urban regeneration. While parts of the city still face deprivation and fragile local economies, Meadowhall Shopping Centre - built on the site of former steelworks beside the River Don - epitomises the shift from heavy industry to consumer-led regeneration in the modern North. Cultural attractions like Kelham Island Museum preserve and celebrate Sheffield’s industrial past, grounding the city’s identity in its working heritage.
Today, the universities - led by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University - bring tens of thousands of students into the city - reshaping neighbourhoods, sustaining cultural life, and driving new forms of economic activity. At the same time, initiatives such as the Multi Agency Drop In Centre reflect Sheffield’s commitment as a self-declared refugee-friendly city, supporting newcomers and contributing to a changing demographic landscape, while the regeneration of the iconic Park Hill estate has reimagined once-challenging housing as a symbol of architectural ambition and social renewal.
Together, these layers of history, education, migration, and reinvention allow The North Revisited project to present Sheffield as a city that embodies a redefined vision of the North - resilient, inclusive, and continually reshaping itself from the legacy of its past.
Stockport
Stockport has long been shaped by transport and industry, with the arrival of the railway in the 19th century transforming it into a vital junction between Manchester and the wider North. The imposing railway viaduct remains one of the town’s defining landmarks, a reminder of the engineering ambition that underpinned Stockport’s growth and its enduring role as a key transport hub, with rail links that continue to connect commuters, goods, and communities.
Alongside this, retail centres such as Merseyway have played an important role in sustaining the town centre, even as shopping habits and economic pressures have shifted in recent decades.
The North Revisited project highlights Stockport as a place where movement, commerce, and history intersect - illustrating how northern towns continue to adapt while remaining anchored to the infrastructure that first gave them purpose and connectivity.
WARRINGTON
Warrington is a town defined by industry and movement, its heritage proudly symbolised by the Golden Gates that commemorate its historic role in steelmaking, engineering, and industrial labour. Long positioned between Cheshire and Lancashire, Warrington straddled both counties for centuries before the boundary changes of 1974 placed it entirely within Cheshire, reflecting its long-standing status as a place in between.
This sense of connection is reinforced by the M62 motorway, which runs to the north of the town and forms a physical and symbolic border with both Greater Manchester and Merseyside, placing Warrington at the crossroads of the North West. Neither wholly industrial city nor rural county town, Warrington has grown through logistics, manufacturing, and retail while negotiating questions of identity and belonging.
Within The North Revisited project, Warrington’s story highlights the North as a network of transitional places - shaped by geography, infrastructure, and history - where identity is fluid and rooted as much in connection as in tradition.
Whitby
Whitby, a striking coastal town in North Yorkshire, is renowned not only for its dramatic cliffs, historic abbey, and maritime heritage, but also for its unexpected status as a hub of Gothic subculture. Inspired in part by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was partly set in the town, Whitby now hosts biannual Goth Weekends that draw thousands of visitors dressed in elaborate Victorian and Gothic attire. These events have transformed Whitby into a celebrated destination for alternative culture, blending literary legacy with visual spectacle and community expression.
The North Revisited project highlights Whitby as a place where tradition and reinvention coexist; where a post-industrial northern town has embraced a unique cultural identity that both supports the local economy and challenges conventional narratives of northern life.
WHITEHAVEN
Whitehaven, a coastal town in west Cumbria, is shaped by a powerful industrial and mining legacy, once home to one of Britain’s earliest and deepest coal mines and a busy port that fuelled regional trade. The closure of its pits and the decline of heavy industry left long-lasting economic scars, and for decades the town has struggled with underinvestment, limited opportunities, and population loss.
For many young people, growing up in Whitehaven can mean facing constrained horizons, with few routes into stable, meaningful employment beyond low-paid or seasonal work. Yet efforts at regeneration, heritage-led tourism, and skills development signal a determination to rebuild and redefine the town’s future.
Within The North Revisited project, Whitehaven stands as a poignant example of the post-industrial North - challenging, resilient, and searching for renewal - where the weight of history continues to shape the possibilities of the present.
Wigan
Wigan is a town indelibly linked to the story of industrial Britain, its identity shaped by coal mining, cotton spinning, and the hard realities of working-class life. George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier brought international attention to the town in the 1930s, documenting the poverty and labour that defined the canal-side warehouses and cramped housing of the industrial North.
Landmarks such as Trencherfield Mill, home to one of the world’s largest working steam engines, stand as powerful reminders of this past, while the Leeds and Liverpool Canal traces the routes through which coal and goods once flowed. In contrast, Wigan Casino became an unlikely cultural landmark in the 1970s, gaining global fame as the heart of the Northern Soul movement and showing the town’s capacity for cultural reinvention. Demolished in 1982, the site is now occupied by the Grand Arcade shopping centre.
Within The North Revisited project, Wigan represents the layered nature of northern identity; where industrial hardship, cultural creativity, and enduring heritage coexist, offering a nuanced portrait of continuity and change in the post-industrial North.
Photographic Notes
As a homage to Bulmer’s pioneering colour work, The North Revisited is photographed mainly using Phoenix 200, a new colour film that was designed and manufactured entirely in the north of England by Harman Technology. This 'quirky' and unpredictable colour film - which was available only as a limited edition - provided an analogue aesthetic that simultaneously harmonised with Bulmer's 1960 colour photographs while affording a unique character to this modern interpretation of what has become an iconic photographic legacy. This experimental film has now been replaced by Phoenix II 200.
The photographs for The North Revisited were taken with Contax G2 cameras (using Carl Zeiss 21mm, 28mm, 35mm, 45mm and 90mm lenses) or occasionally with Nikon F6 cameras (using Nikkor 14mm f2.8, 35mm f1.4, 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 lenses).
All films were processed by Harman Laboratory and negatives were proofed to digital files using a Fujifilm SP-3000 scanner. Negatives for publication and exhibition prints were scanned using a Nikon Super Coolscan V ED. Exhibition prints were made using a Canon PRO-1100 and printed to Hahnemühle Silk Baryta X paper.
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