The Gaumont Grandeur Of Halifax

To me it is, and has always been, the Gaumont Cinema. It’s had other names and been other things, but even today I would probably still refer to it as the Gaumont. The surprising thing is that it has only had that name for a comparatively short period of its 107 year history; for just … Continue reading The Gaumont Grandeur Of Halifax

Transported By A Slogan

GEORGE STREET, HALIFAX (1960s) Images can be evocative: they can conjure up feelings and emotions with the skill of a practiced magician - but so too can phrases. This is another of my "night shots" from the mid to late 1960s: neither the darkness nor the passage of five decades can hide the magnificent frontage … Continue reading Transported By A Slogan

AB With FT

AB WITH FT Before digital time stamps were invented, you had to rely on more indirect means to date photographs. Thanks to a newspaper headline about the launch of the Serious Fraud Office, I can confidently say that this photograph of me was taken in April 1988. I seem rather relaxed, sat in one of … Continue reading AB With FT

The Days Before Burdock

This old image has gone through quite a journey. It was far from perfect when it started life, 55 years or so ago: the focus was suspect and the composition could have been improved by some selective demolition work. At an early stage in its life it got converted from a negative into a positive … Continue reading The Days Before Burdock

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