A new scan of an old family photograph which shows Raymond and Edith Berry in - at a guess - 1950 or so. You only get railings like that at the seaside, so it is likely to be the North Wales coast.

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

Sepia Saturday 277 : The Puds, The Fat And The Ungodly The small town Grammar School I went to played rugby. They had no time for what we in this country call football - and others call soccer - as such a game was the preserve of the working classes.  And the rugby that was played … Continue reading The Puds, The Fat And The Ungodly

1297 : Just A Lock DOORLOCK, PINOSO, SPAIN There is something rather mysterious about locks. Do they keep things in or things out? That dark chasm, framed by rust, is a kind of sentinel. Or there again, it might just be a lock.

What Makes A Good Pub? The Three Legs, The Headrow, Leeds I was phoned up by Radio Leeds the other day (I was sat in a garden in Spain at the time, but that is another story). They wanted to know what made for a good pub. As far as I remember, this is, more … Continue reading What Makes A Good Pub?