Jan Gray

Photography

  • HOME

  • ABOUT

  • PURCHASE PRINTS

  • GALLERIES - 2021

    • AFTER TIDE MILLS
    • BEHIND THE WALL
    • DEPARTURE
    • HAWTHORN
    • MEMORIES OF RUSSIA
    • PLATFORM
    • RAMPION
    • SPINDLES
    • THE WISHING TREES
    • WEST BEACH
    • WINTER

  • GALLERIES - ARCHIVE

    • ABSENT
    • CREEP (Copse)
    • FIELD WORK
    • FLOOD 2020
    • F(L)IGHT
    • FRANCIS
    • ISOLATION 2020
    • PETT LEVEL
    • POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES
    • SITE of SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC INTEREST
    • SOUTHEASE
    • TELSCOMBE CLIFFS
    • THE GARDEN of PERSEPHONE
    • THE ORCHARD
    • THE VILLAGE
    • THEY SAW (BEACHY HEAD)

  • BLOG

  • GALLERIES

    Use tab to navigate through the menu items.

     a photographer..........wandering the south downs, often into abstraction

     

    After Tide Mills

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    When I was 14 my Dad was out of work, we were crippled financially and my Mum often cried at night. He was a proud, hard working man, but hereditary heart disease along with 30 fags a day rendered his arteries incompatible with his job as a Milkman. So he had to 'give it up or die', as the Doctor put it. Unskilled, 58 years old with a dodgy ticker in Thatcher's Britain, he was screwed. Noone would employ him. For 5 long years. 

    ​

    His case was only one of many. The crumbling of the concept of 'society', mass unemployment, poverty and a sense of hopelessness made life as a working class family hard.

    ​

    The East Sussex ruin Tide Mills, which lies between the coastal towns of Seaford and Newhaven, reminds me of that hopelessness. It was a small village that prospered in its prime as a flour mill community. Constructed in 1761, it had its own school, railway station and dozens of cottages. Industrial and social changes eventually closed the mill and the houses began to deteriorate through lack of investment. Occupants lived in squalor and they were deemed unfit for human habitation. Residents were forcibly removed in 1939. A community closed, ended, broken by economic change that forgot to care what happened to the workforce. The miners anyone? 

     

    Cue The Specials:

    ​

    Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?
    We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown

    [Jerry Dammers, 'Ghost Town', 1981]

    ​

    After Tide Mills 001
    After Tide Mills 002
    After Tide Mills 003
    After Tide Mills 004
    After Tide Mills 005
    After Tide Mills 006
    After Tide Mills 007
    After Tide Mills 008
    After Tide Mills 009
    After Tide Mills 010
    After Tide Mills 011
    After Tide Mills 012
    After Tide Mills 013
    After Tide Mills 014
    After Tide Mills 015
    After Tide Mills 016
    After Tide Mills 017
    After Tide Mills 018
    After Tide Mills 019
    After Tide Mills 020
    After Tide Mills 021
    After Tide Mills 022
    After Tide Mills 023
    After Tide Mills 024
    After Tide Mills 025
    After Tide Mills 026
    After Tide Mills 027
    After Tide Mills 028
    After Tide Mills 029
    After Tide Mills 030
    After Tide Mills 031
    After Tide Mills 032
    After Tide Mills 033
    After Tide Mills 034
    After Tide Mills 035
    Out of gallery