In 1968 I went to live in Birmingham for a year. These two photographs were taken during that period and feature what was, at the time, the modern shopping centre at the heart of the city : the Bull Ring Centre. The Centre was all blocks and concrete, passages and steel. overpasses and underpasses. It … Continue reading Concrete Bull In A Monochrome China Shop

  I must have taken this photograph of Wimbledon Palais in the 1970s. By then it was in terminal decline, and moving through the end stages of life of all great venues : from bingo hall to furniture store to builders' rubble. Forty years earlier it had attracted dancers from all over London with the … Continue reading Picture Post 1405 : An Old Trouper Begging For Coins

Unloading coal at a wharf in Leeds on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. I must have taken the photograph fifty years ago when the river and canal in Leeds were industrial by-waters. These days they are all plate glass offices and designer restaurants. All Change.

Shaw Lane Mills, Halifax : 1980s. The fire escape is like one of those M C Escher Impossible Stairways - you can run but you can never escape. A bit like the local mill for generation after generation of my family.

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features an illustration from a late Victorian edition of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. There are all sorts of directions I could go with this theme. My Great Grandmother, for example, married a chap called J Robinson Thickpenny; but that is another story altogether and best left until … Continue reading Sepia Saturday 308 : The Lusty Cloth Dressers Of Halifax