IN PICTURES: NI photographer capturing the beauty of abandoned properties

Beka Brownlie’s passion in life is taking photographs in houses where you are sure to encounter no living souls.

Given the need for social distancing it would seem a perfect hobby to continue during lockdown.

But like everyone else Beka found her movements restricted to the point where she had to settle for sifting through her archive of photographs of derelict properties which she has been sharing on her Facebook page Abandoned NI over the past few months.

She said: “The past couple of weeks I’ve started to get out again because before then you couldn’t travel due to restrictions.

“I wouldn’t want to be getting stopped by the police and having to explain I’m going to take pictures of abandoned properties.

“I used to do weddings, but I stopped it, I wasn’t enjoying it. I focused on this, this is the only type of photography that I do now.”

Explaining what draws her to taking photographs of long-lost properties, Beka said: “Every house is different. Everyone wants to know what’s in an abandoned house, what’s been left behind, who’s lived here, what kind of life did they have?

“From the things left in the house you can sort of piece together the person who lived there.

“There’s always that anticipation of what are you going to find in the next one? That’s the draw.

“The most fascinating was that house in Cookstown. It was two years ago I finished that.”

Beka explained how she found a farmhouse in Co Tyrone which turned out to be a treasure trove: “Initially there was an artist who follows my page. He messaged me in 2016 to tell me about his brother-in-law who is a farmer and has a couple of houses on his land.

“There was one his auntie used to live in that was abandoned. He said, ‘you’d love it’, so he organised for me to come down and document it.

“The farmer said to me about another house up the lane – that was Dessie’s cottage. He said, ‘Dessie has just gone into a home but I know he’d love to talk to you because he likes history, when he gets back out of the home I’ll arrange for you to come up and meet him’.

“That never happened. I got a call two years later to say Dessie had died, but the farmer said Dessie had willed the house to him. He was knocking it down for a new build and asked if I wanted to come up to document it.

“He said, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to be any use to you, if there’ll be anything interesting but come up and have a look, see what you think’.

“I really didn’t think it was going to be that good then once I opened the door I was just blown away.”

Relics found in the house included a copy of 1912 Ulster Covenant, a UVF flyer from 1913, an 1851 Ireland Census and a copy of the Mid Ulster Mail from 1917.

The story of Beka’s documentation of Dessie’s property recently resurfaced in some major UK publications.

Beka said: “The Daily Mail was the first, then Sun, the Mirror and then Lad Bible.

“They had contacted me and asked me could they run it, I said ‘yeah, why not’.”

The story had previously featured in the Belfast Telegraph while the News Letter had covered the talks Beka did on Dessie’s house.

She said: “I set up in Riddel’s warehouse two rooms with items from the house. It was a chance for people to come, hear about Dessie’s story, look at the images and then have some bits and pieces to look at after.”

Beka said there she wasn’t alone in having a passion for documenting derelict buildings: “There is quite a community for it. It’s something that we can all relate to.

“I find a lot of these places that I go to and put up the images, you find there’s a lot of people from an older generation who relate to some of the items, for example they remember their mother having a Singer sewing machine. It’s so nostalgic.”

Beka said the equipment she used to capture her eyecatching photos was pretty basic: “It’s nothing fancy, just a Nikon D600, wide angle lens and a tripod. That’s it. I keep it simple.

“I use natural light, I find flash can bleach your images out. It’s not good for that type of photography.”

Explaining what attracted her to this kind of photography, she said: “Where it all started for me, I was in a paranormal group in 2010. I was the team photographer and the location finder. I had come across Cairndhu House in Larne. I was totally captivated by it, it looks like something from America, it doesn’t look like it should be here.

“I tracked down the owner who was a property developer. He said, ‘yeah, come and go as you please, here’s your own set of keys’ because at that time it was totally secure. I thought I was the lady of the manor, having the keys of this big house. That’s where it all started, I then edged away from the paranormal and focused solely on the photography.

“I started going around loads of different places and then I started to build a big catalogue of images for the Facebook page. I started that in 2013.”

She said: “I couldn’t even put a number on how many locations I’ve visited. There would be hundreds. You never run out of them. There’s so many. It’s just getting the time to do it. To document them all.

“There’s different ways of finding out about them. Some people message the page, maybe they own a house that they’re knocking down for a new build. They ask me to come down and document the old house.

“Or people will message me and say they’ve driven past a place I should check out.

“I look on Google Map and find places through that.”

Asked if she ever felt a presence in people’s homes or locations which were once hives of activity, Beka said: “Every house has a different vibe. Some feel welcoming, some don’t. Dessie’s house is a prime example, it was dead of winter when I was there, there was snow on the ground, but the house still felt warm like it was still lived in. You definitely pick up on things like that.

“In some places I do video recordings too. You end up picking things up on the recording that you don’t hear until you’ve played it back.

“A prime example was when I went to a former convent over the border. They had renovated it into this adventure centre for kids.

“It was just me and my sister there. She was recording on an iPad and I was taking photos. We were walking down the dormitories.

“We came to the end of the corridor, I opened a door on my left and as I opened it, we heard a male voice really close to us as if he was standing behind us. We were the only two people there.

“We stopped it and played the recording back. You could hear a faint male voice but you couldn’t make it out what it was saying.

“When we brought it home and put it on a computer it’s a man’s voice saying ‘you are crazy’.

“It doesn’t put me off, absolutely not. I think if I saw something face to face that would be different.”

Of her strangest discovery Beka said: “I found a wedding dress in one of the houses. I was gobsmacked.

“There were pianos in the house, everything was still there. They had crucifixes, a lot of religious stuff, Bibles.

“Then I opened the wardrobe door, and the wedding dress was there. I would have thought of all the things in the house I would have made sure to take out the wedding dress, if it belonged to a loved one.

“It’s sad, it leaves you with that sadness that maybe they didn’t have anyone who cared enough to do that.

“The dress was in brilliant condition. In that same house there was dead crows hanging from the windows.

“I think that was because crows were getting in and the farmer was trying to deter other crows from getting in.

“It gave an eerie feel to it, especially with the big crucifix and the Bibles. That’s the strangest find by far.”

She told the story behind a horrific picture taken in Belgium which is posted on her Facebook page: “I went to Belgium last summer to do this because there’s a few locations there.

“There’s a hospital I wanted to do. There was just me and another friend.

“We went into the hospital and one of the first rooms we walked into was a bathroom.

“It was like a scene from the movie Saw, there was blood up the walls and a massive free standing crucifix in the corner.

“I turned to run out, then went back for a closer look.

“I discovered it was fake blood, it had been used in a movie or something like that. I took the image, it’s an amazing photograph.”

Beka lives in Maghaberry, on her own with her two children - Ollie (13) and Rhea (five).

Her photography is solely a hobby, though she’d love to do more with it.

Beka, who works for a company who rents fridges to food and drink producers for exhibitions, said: “I don’t get paid for going out and doing the photos, though I do sell some prints and calendars. I’ve been in touch with a book agent about doing a book. That would be great.”