Industrial activity on the Somerset Levels is often given an idyllic slant. Monochrome images of country folk engaged in some sort of antediluvian process of extraction, with manual turf cutters and hand carts piled up with peat, illustrate most books and articles covering the history of this area. In the late eighties the documentary photographer Patrick Sutherland captioned one of his photographs with: An atmosphere of dereliction and waste [is] inseparable from the peatlands north of the Poldens. And this is certainly an aspect of the peat industry, and the area in general, that escapes the attention of most writers. This slightly haphazard and untidy quality is partly a result of the peat industry. Diggers, bulldozers, and cutters are found in numerous remote corners of the Somerset Moors, abandoned to the ravages of the weather, rusting slowly amongst the undergrowth. My images documenting defunct machines are not primarily a critique of the environmental impact but a counterpoint to all those who represent this industry as somehow bucolic. For me, the skeletal remains of plant are as much a part of the Levels landscape as the wildlife and drainage ditches, which the ’heritage’ writers missing what Patrick Sutherland astutely observed all those years ago. A myopic view of the British landscape.