Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
Ivy And The Celebrity Ladies Orchestra
When I was young, my Auntie Annie would tell me tales of her cousin Ivy, who played in an all-women’s band. I never met Ivy, and her side of the family remained a mythical branch located far away on the other side of the Pennines. A few years ago, I received a box of old family photographs from someone who traced me through Ancestry, and there amongst them was a picture of Ivy (second from left) and her Celebrity Ladies Orchestra.
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When Markets Were Markets
This photograph comes from the same strip of negatives as the one I featured yesterday and, we now know – thanks to research by Paul Hartley and Michael Horsfield – was taken…
Time Extinguisher
I’ve tried to make up for the lack of a precise date on this photograph of mine by going back to the archives of the Milk Marketing Board to discover when this…
Domino Run
I took this photograph getting on for twenty years ago. It shows Cowcliffe Hill Road plunging down towards a suitably undefined Huddersfield. It’s that row of terraced houses that captures the attention:…
Skegness Rock
You can cut this picture up into a dozen pieces, and each one will have Skegness running through it. It will have a bracing wind blowing sand up from the…
Edwardian AI
This early twentieth century picture postcard image of the approach to Halifax Railway Station has the look of something that has been created by a cut-price AI image colourising programme.…
Real People, Real Lives
Whilst photographs may start out life as things that are intensely personal – this is Aunty Vera, this is our holiday – after a century or more pressed in an…
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