Environment Project Inspiration

For my environment project I wanted to pursue the theme of abandoned or disused buildings and how nature adapts to abandoned places the longer they are left derelict. 

 I began my research by looking at various websites showing these types of buildings. However, once I began to look further into this I found sites showing disused railway stations and found this began to appeal to me more than the buildings.

I then researched a photographer called Joel Sternfeld, an American photographer born in New York in 1954. He is noted for his large format documentary pictures of America and had produced a series of photographs entitled ‘The High Line.’ His photos showed various railway tracks and surrounding areas in a state of decay.

More research led me to an area of north London where I intend to visit and photograph. The northern heights line ran from Finsbury Park to Alexander Palace, which in its heyday carried 60,000 passengers one Bank Holiday. London Underground published plans in the 1930s to incorporate it into the Northern Line but the work was stopped at an advanced stage due to the outbreak of World War II. The development plan was abandoned after the war but passenger trains ran on this line until 1954. The service was then reduced to freight haulage and tube traffic until its final closure in 1970.

The abandoned area gradually became home to a variety of wildlife including deer, bats and foxes so the local authority converted the trackbed to the Parkland Walk, London’s longest nature reserve, running along the top of the embankment and through deep wooded cuttings of the original railway.