Londoners could be mistaken in thinking their city was under siege. With the forthcoming Olympic developments bulldozing a huge swathe through the east end, the ill conceived demolition of Wembley’s twin towers and the potential toppling of Battersea’s cooling stacks, the capital seems to be changing at ever increasing rates.

With the exception of the popular Derelict London website, the capital’s many derelict and disappearing haunts remain undocumented and unrecorded in their final throes. Urban explorers, perhaps unwilling to pay the congestion charge, limit themselves to the periphery, circling the capital and picking off the odd asylum in their path. Derelict London itself is an unsatisfying prick tease; all bluster and talk, with no penetration, no satisfying probing of the interiors.

This is where Left London succeeds. The first book by Stucco Press is also the first to get to grips with the capital’s derelict landscape. Travelling the length and breath of London’s sprawl over the course of a year, photographers Alexander Shields and William Eckersley immersed themselves in London’s lost, decaying and decrepit places, recording the final vistas of ruination, and finding unexpected beauty and grandeur as the old buildings succumbed to nature or the bulldozer.

Whilst completing a Masters course at Central Saints Martin, Shields' initial idea was to create artistic installations within derelict places, using the shattered surroundings at backdrops to his work. He then discovered the backgrounds were far more interesting, and embarked on quest, aided by architectural photographer Eckersley. The resulting thousands of pictures whittled down, sorted into categories and presented as a thick, glossy coffee table book, became an alternative guide to London.

Targeting into industry, transport, health and leisure (which became the four chapters of the book), Shields and Eckersley scrambled around old mills, walked track beds, infiltrated hospitals and asylums, and breached social clubs and lidos. Their first forays sometimes became unwitting epitaphs, as the demolition teams moved in and reduced the buildings to rubble before their return trip. This served to emphases the transient nature of the capital’s derelict places, the dynamism of the genres following them, and the poignant reminder that nothing lasts forever.

They captured the eerie wonders found within derelict places perfectly. The operating theatre at Putney Hospital with lighting still burning; a desk at Cane Hill with a phone angled as if to be waiting for a call, the empty Lidos just requiring a quick top-up. They also captured the buildings’ temporary last uses: as graffiti artists’ canvasses, urban explorers’ wildernesses and arsonists wet dreams.

Apart from Telegraph journalist’s Gervase de Wilde’s introduction, the book features no text. To try to contextualise and rationalize the images would time consuming, space wasting and, ultimately, would detract from the bold, colour pictures themselves. To repeat a hackneyed phrase, the pictures do tell their own, somewhat morbid, sad, stories.

Weighing in at 170 pages, Left London is a hefty tome, packed with colour pictures of strangeness and stillness. Urban explorers will be familiar with some of these places, but Shields and Eckersley find new ways to represent them. (For example, their photographs of the extensively covered Cane Hill offer some new views and unexplored areas, a fresh viewpoint on an overexposed subject). For that, and all the other pages, this book should definitely be tracked down.

For copies and further information: www.leftlondon.co.uk

One of my critiques of urban exploration, especially when used as a modus operandi for a higher purpose, is the sheer randomness of the entire process. Documenting a building entirely is difficult, especially if evading patrols, sneaking past PIRs and blocked by barricades.

Imagine the possibilities if given the opportunity to do it properly, unfettered by chance and circumstance.

Offered such an opportunity, Daniel Clark grabbed it with both hands. His passion, Crossley Hospital East, a former Sanatorium lost in the woodland of Delamere, Cheshire, had been lying derelict for over ten years. With permission, Clark photographed its decaying exteriors and lost interiors. This book is the result.

Professionally bound and printed using high quality paper, the 94 page book offers a short history of the institution, then takes the reader around the exteriors before diving in the dilapidated interiors and culminates with the ancillary buildings scattered around the site. Combining the vastness of empty wards, stairwells and communal spaces with the miniature of abandoned furniture and rusting fixtures, the book confers both the size of the institution and glimpses of the human stories that undoubtedly played out there.

Crossley Hospital East is not a history of the hospital, nor offers any opinions or solutions to the building’s predicament. It simply shows it how it was (using a small selection of archival photos) and how it is now. It is a picture book where the hospital tells its own story.

The pictures are black and white and taken in winter. This conspires to make the location noticeably bleak and flat, losing the beauty and detail of any coloured brickwork and stone. This is my only main criticism, which is purely subjective at best, as the pictures are beautifully taken and framed. There is also noticeable pixilation in a couple of shots, which betrays digital origins, but doesn’t detract.

Those who like derelict places, and the delay and beauty of these fragile places, should purchase a copy.

Additionally those interested in the documentation and photographic preservation of derelict and lost places, and who want their work recognised and immortalized, should definitely buy this book. It’s the way forward. It shows what’s possible. For that, it’s is extremely important.

For copies and further information: www.crossleysanatorium.co.uk