Drone captures Oldham's Hartford Mill's last moments

David Burnip, also known as ‘Wandering Turnip’ on YouTube, first heard of the mill’s demolition on Saturday – just a day before it was due to be demolished through an explosion.

The Hebden Bridge-based urban explorer, who has previously documented chimneys on his YouTube channel, walked into the site the day before, dressed in high-vis, to get a closer look, as well as some drone footage from the top of the chimney.

The 31-year-old said he had been making videos for about a year, after looking for a creative hobby when he turned 30.

Attending and filming at the demolition, David said that he hadn’t realised people liked chimneys as much as him, adding that there was a ‘nice atmosphere’ with ‘hundreds of people’ coming to say goodbye.

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Speaking about his experience, he said: “It’s pretty sad, I think. Because where I live in Hebden I’m surrounded by all of them. For me, it feels like part of my childhood, part of my life, that these things are there.

“They mean a lot to me and I know that the chimney standing in Oldham will mean a lot to people there, as well.

“Someone tweeted me saying ‘You’ve got to have a look at this’. It’s funny, you get some people in the comments saying ‘What an eyesore, I’m glad that’s going’.

"It’s going to be replaced by newbuild houses, would you rather look at a nice, big, chimney, or some quickly thrown-up newbuild houses?

“For me, it’s the end of an era, really, seeing that history going. The more that this stuff does go, the less connection we have to the past that built all these towns, especially Oldham. There’s so much history.

“It’s literally just watching history collapse really, isn’t it?”

David Burnip (Image: David Burnip)

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Sending his drone up to the top of the mill, David said he was able to get a feel for the scale of how tall it was.

The urban explorer added: “There’s a feeling of the height; those guys that built it, brick by brick. It’s so tall. That drone really captures that kind of scary height.

"It’s weird as well, because I can manage to look down the chimney, and you just see it’s growing inside and been reclaimed by nature. It feels like it is part of nature.

“For some reason, they don’t look like just a chimney, they kind of become part of the landscape. That’s what is kind of really hard when you’re just thinking that’s going to go now.

“I’ve never seen one be demolished before, so I wanted to get over, because it is what’s happening with them, but it was weird. When will the next one go now?”

Hartford Mill chimney was the last remaining structure of the former mill which opened in 1907.

The mill had produced cotton until the late 1950s and more recently was the home for Littlewoods until the retailer left in 1991.

Hartford Mill prior to demolition, with the chimney in foreground (Image: Chris Allen, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)

The building was listed in 1993 as Grade II, however, its condition rapidly deteriorated and many considered the site to become an eyesore as well as a hotspot for anti-social behaviour such as graffiti and fly-tipping.

Plans to knock down the mill were approved in 2019 and demolition began the following year after the Government gave the green light. 

Work was then halted due to Covid restrictions and the landowner's plans to remove the chimney with a specialist machine were not possible due to the equipment being unavailable.