Surrounded as we are by beautiful buildings, we sometimes take them for granted. So, the next time you walk through Halifax, pause for a moment and look up at the former Calder and Hebble Navigation Office at the corner of Southate and Alexandra Street. Look up and say, “You’re really quite beautiful, you know”.
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A Very Safe Building
Horton House in Halifax now has a sign proclaiming “Unsafe Building - Do Not Enter”. What a reverse for this fine building that once was the school clinic where generations of Halifax children were inoculated against deadly diseases. It was then, a very safe building indeed.
Blackledge
By tracing the route I must have taken 53 years ago, I suspect I was in Blackledge, just outside the Halifax Piece Hall, when I took this. The pile of old metal may have been an art installation - but more likely was left over from the demolition of the wholesale market.
A Walk Down Russel Street
As I scan my way through a strip of old negatives, I am constantly amending decisions I have made about when and where some of the photographs were taken. Many of these negatives are over fifty years old, and over the years they have gathered their own collection of scratches, dust spots and blemishes. I … Continue reading A Walk Down Russel Street
Man At A Bus Stop (The AI Wars)
I received an invitation to give Adobe Firefly - their new Artificial Intelligence generated creative system - a try, and at the same time I was trying to work out what to do with a rather tired old photograph I took almost sixty years ago. The photograph was taken in Halifax and shows a bus … Continue reading Man At A Bus Stop (The AI Wars)
Halifax Piece Hall
The last of the "Sketches of Halifax" published in the Illustrated London News of the 5th August 1882 is, appropriately enough, a sketch of what is now the town's most celebrated building - the Piece Hall. When the ILN artist visited the Piece Hall back in 1882, he found a building that was in decline. … Continue reading Halifax Piece Hall
The First Tram In Space
1909 Postcard : Free School Lane, Halifax (AB Collection) This is another old view of a road I knew so well. I used to walk down from school and then take a short cut from Clover Hill Road to Well Head and then the Bus Station for the bus home. There won't have been tram … Continue reading The First Tram In Space
Fire In Halifax (1968)
I came across a fire near the bottom of Hanson Lane by chance one day back in 1968, when I was walking into town from the Library. The photographs I took were just a record of a chance event, but over half a century later, they have become something of a social record of the … Continue reading Fire In Halifax (1968)
In The People’s Park
Another of the "Sketches of Halifax" from the 1882 article in the Illustrated London News. "In The People's Park: The People's Park, given to the town by the late Sir Francis Crossley ... was laid out with much taste and skill by Sir Joseph Paxton; and its terrace, shown in one of our Sketches, likewise … Continue reading In The People’s Park
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