The Assignment this week was to photograph industry and agriculture.
I recently walked part of the cycle path that will ultimately link the new development at Waterbeach with the Regional College and the King’s Hedges area of Cambridge. I discovered the remains of the Sunclose Fruit Farm at Impington and returned to take photographs for this assignment.
I see the pictures as something of an elegy for Cambridgeshire fruit growing that once extended from Melbourn in the south through Histon, Cottenham. Willingham and up into the fens around Wisbech. In the 1920s and 30s thousands of pickers came by train to Wisbech from London, Sheffield and Doncaster in a seasonal rush that mirrors the more well-known hop picking in Kent. During the 1950s and early 60s the Chivers jam factory in Histon was a major employer in the area. As a teenager, I spent a summer picking plumbs at Barrington.
I made the photographs in black and white to emphasise the form, texture and tone of the derelict poly tunnels.
