Category: Calendar

A Bit Of A Back Street Mystery

I've called this "Back Street In Elland", but I'm not sure it is. The next couple of shots on the negative strip are of Elland, and I certainly took a lot of photos in the town in the 1970s. However, I can't pin down the location and I have wandered around both physically and via … Continue reading A Bit Of A Back Street Mystery

Glory, Side-On

I walked past Bethesda Church in Elland the other day. I must have passed it by a thousand times before without pausing to look and appreciate its fine features. Designed by William Hill of Leeds - the architect of some beautiful town halls including those in Bolton, Yeadon and Portsmouth - and built in 1879-80, … Continue reading Glory, Side-On

The Fate Of The Horse

This is one of those photographs where you try to line up buildings and, with all the skill of a CSI officer, work out where I might have been standing when I took the photo fifty-odd years ago. I'm not sure of the answer, but zooming in on the background and seeing which buildings have … Continue reading The Fate Of The Horse

A Tidy Sum

I decided to tidy my room yesterday. Given the amount of junk/priceless antiquarian collections of ephemera my room is home to, this is both a major undertaking and one that is never completed. After half an hour, I found an old 5000 Mark German banknote, and after that, I spent a good half hour researching … Continue reading A Tidy Sum

Monochrome Memories

HALIFAX POWER STATION FROM CHARLESTOWN ROAD, 1967 : The clouds can't really have been that dark, the walls that soot-encrusted, the chimneys so stark. Time must have paid tricks on the film emulsion, or my exposure calculations were somewhat inaccurate. As for my memory, part of it says the sun always shined and the sky … Continue reading Monochrome Memories

That Magnificent Girl In Her Flying Machine

This is a wonderful photograph of my father's cousin, Ivy Burnett. She was born in Birmingham in 1906, and this photograph must have been taken when she was three or four. The great craze at the time was the new flying machines, and many photographic studios would have mock-up sets for sitters to use. Thus … Continue reading That Magnificent Girl In Her Flying Machine

Crowning Glory

This is a sight familiar to a whole generation of Halifax folk. I took the photo from on top of Godley Bridge, but you got the same view from the front seat of a Corporation bus. There was something quite cinematic about the constrained view as the bus made its way up Godley Cutting, and … Continue reading Crowning Glory

Picturesque Scenes

Driving through the Yorkshire Dales last weekend, you didn't have to seek out picturesque scenes, they formed disorderly queues in order to present themselves to you. Around almost every corner would be a history-steeped bridge over a stone-stepped brook, flanked by pubs that would tempt a Son of Temperance. This example was in the village … Continue reading Picturesque Scenes

Needing A Measure

My mother's uncle, the splendidly named Fowler Beanland, was a great bowling enthusiast, and this is one of his photographs. It has a caption - Bowling At Devonshire Park, Keighley - but no date. I know that he lived, worked - and bowled - up in Cumbria in the early years of the twentieth century, … Continue reading Needing A Measure