Basin Street Blues

A determination to catch the last of the late summer sun took me to Brighouse Canal Basin yesterday, and a determination to scan my way through all my old photographs also took me to the same place - albeit fifty-three years earlier. The canal basin was looking glorious in the sunshine. A few late flowers … Continue reading Basin Street Blues

Service At The Inn

This is a picture I must have taken in the mid to late 1960s. It shows the Crispin Service Station on Winding Road, Halifax. It is no use going looking for it now because it is long gone and it is the buildings that stood here before that I am primarily interested in. As is … Continue reading Service At The Inn

Odeon Memories

I took this photograph - looking towards Waterhouse Street from Orange Street, Halifax - one dark, rainy night over half a century ago. In some ways, not a lot has changed over those five and a half decades - the bowling alley on the left is now a hotel, the roundabout is gone, and the … Continue reading Odeon Memories

Footfall Replacing Fishermen

PRINCES DOCK, HULL (1980s) During the early 1980s, I would occasionally go to meetings in Hull, and, determined to make the best of my visits, I would explore the city which was, quite literally, at the end of the line from where I was living in Sheffield. At that time, the docks still crept into … Continue reading Footfall Replacing Fishermen

The Streets Of Elland

This is a series of photographs taken in Elland, Yorkshire, sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. Looking at the individual photographs, I can almost trace the route I took through the bottom end of the town. It was part of Elland that had been recently detached from the rest of the town by the building … Continue reading The Streets Of Elland

Halifax As It Was

GAS WORKS & RAILWAY SIDINGS FROM NORTH BRIDGE, HALIFAX Looking back at this photograph I must have taken sometime around 1968, it has a staged feeling to it, as though it has been carefully posed as an album cover for a Champion Jack Dupree LP. It wasn't staged, however, nor were the colour tampered with. … Continue reading Halifax As It Was

Straight Lines And Edges

This is Elland in the 1970s. The harsh straight lines of lampposts and mill chimneys stand out in sharp contrast from the curve of Upper Edge in the background. One of the mills is now long-gone, the other has been converted into apartments. The lampposts are still there - and so is the hill.

A Different World

HALIFAX PIECE HALL (1960s) It was a different world, a different time. What is now seen as an architectural icon, was then simply a place of work. Where now you can find good books, rare objects, and visual and culinary delights; then you could find Maris Pipers, Cox's Pippens and Hawke's Champagne Rhubarb. Feet now … Continue reading A Different World

History In Pixels

MARKET STREET, HALIFAX (c1964) It's one of those photographs full of movement, full of buildings, full of memories, and full of history. From the various visual clues and by searching what is left of my memory, I can conclude that I must have taken this photograph in the mid 1960s, for the sake of argument, … Continue reading History In Pixels