Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
Enjoy The View
I wish I could remember taking this photograph, but I can’t; after all, it was a long time ago. I must have been up Clifton way, looking down over the lower Calder Valley towards Brighouse. If you can’t get to sleep tonight, you could try the industrial West Yorkshire equivalent of counting sheep: counting mill chimneys. Then again, you could just relax and enjoy the view.
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Leaving The Shed
This 1947 photograph came into my care through family hand-me-downs and shows a retirement party at a Bingley mill in January 1947. It is not clear whether the person retiring is the…
Electric Houses And Botany Worsted Suits
Two adverts from Halifax newspapers 100 years ago today paint an interesting picture of society in the 1920s. One advert is for new suits, available from Sam Stocks for £5.50. The other…
Gone And Going
It’s probably been sixty years since I took this photograph of the old railway sheds beside North Bridge in Halifax, and a lot has happened since then. The sheds have…
Fishing For Postcards
This week’s postcard comes from the collection of my great-uncle, Fowler Beanland. It shows the Mechanics’ Institute in Keighley, a building with which he would have been very familiar. It…
Reflections Of Bradford
Artificial intelligence can manipulate images in wonderful ways, transforming corporate headquarters into Dalí-esque fantasies and Victorian piles into Gaudí-esque dreams. However, you don’t need AI when a plate-glass office block…
