Chat Moss Polaroids
Chat Moss lies north of Irlam and South of Worsley in Salford, Greater Manchester. The Moss makes up 30% of the land area of the City of Salford, 2750 hectares of grade 1 and 2 farmland. For 90 years Manchester and Salford’s “night soil” was dumped on Chat Moss, this resulted in a very fertile soil and from the 1920’s and 30’s when the Moss was drained and stabilised, Chat Moss became Greater Manchester primary source of vegetables and salad crops. Chat Moss is the collective name given to the number of Moss' that make up Chat Moss.
Chat Moss’ is recorded as far back in history as the 7th Century and was regarded as an insurmountable area of bog that would “bear neither horse or man*”, this however was set to change when in 1829 George Stephenson constructed a railway through the Moss on a floating raft set upon a stone and wooden foundation. The laying of the railway and the access roads laid during it’s construction allowed access to Chat Moss, access that resulted in tramways being laid to allow the dumping of Manchester and Salford’s sewage. Chat Moss also had it’s own railway stations, there were five along the length of the Manchester to Liverpool railway; Barton Moss 1st site, Barton Moss 2nd site, Lambs cottage, Astley and Flow Moss. All the remains today is the signal box and crossing at Astley which are still in use.
Today however, farming on the Moss is in decline, back in 2003 it was reported that of the 54 farms on Chat Moss only 3 were growing vegetables or salad crops. Most are now growing turf, livestock or providing livery for horses. There are also large areas of commercial peat extraction, these areas are completely barren and are only broken up by deep drainage ditches. There are plans to return some of these areas back to nature by Salford Council.
These 15 images are just a sample of 2 months work out of a continuing project to document Chat Moss. The decision to use Polaroids was born out of comparing the demise of farming on Chat Moss with the demise in Polaroid and it’s famous instant film in 2008. I believe that Polaroids have a timeless aesthetic that helps capture a passing era better than any other medium.
* Daniel Defoe, 1724