Country diary: Racing peregrines among the rusting mills | Richard Smyth

<p><strong>Manningham, Bradford:</strong> Twenty-six years after this great industrial hub closed down, it still has resonances with the community via its thrilling wildlife</p><p>A peregrine comes bombing down from the ornamented parapet of the 76-metre mill chimney Lister’s Pride, and a hundred pigeons scatter. I’m on Patent Street, Bradford, by the west wall of what was once the biggest silk mill in Europe, called <a href="https://photos.bradfordmuseums.org/view-item?i=156&amp;amp;WINID=1760378745629">Lister’s Mill</a>, or sometimes Manningham Mills. It was thrown up in the 1870s by <a href="https://bradfordlocalstudies.com/samuel-cunliffe-lister/">Samuel Cunliffe Lister</a>, and for more than a century was one of the great industrial palaces of the north. Since shutting in 1999, about half has been restored as offices and high-end flats; the other half is derelict. Forests of buddleia cover the concrete floors, and fox trails wind through the weeds.</p><p>Peer through steel grilles into the basements, and see hart’s-tongue ferns as thick and green as cabbages in a vegetable patch. Rust is everywhere (what John Ruskin called “living” iron: “It is not a fault in the iron, but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted”). On the stretch of grass across the street, gulls gather in great numbers. Today they’re mostly black-headed, with one hulking lesser black-back comically conspicuous in the middle of the throng. At the back I spot two first-year common gulls, paddling their feet in a hopeful worm dance.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/18/country-diary-racing-peregrines-among-the-rusting-mills">Continue reading...</a>