All Change At Brighouse

As I drive into Brighouse later today and glance down at the River Calder from Bradford Road Bridge, I will be checking the river levels rather than the aesthetics of the view. Perhaps, however, I should take a moment to compare the current scene with this photo I took almost 60 years ago. The river … Continue reading All Change At Brighouse

Waiting For Change

Halifax as it was sixty years ago. If you compare and contrast it with Halifax as it is today, you will find that most of the structures are still in place - but the shops have changed, the signs have changed, the cars have changed, and you can no longer wait for 30 minutes. The … Continue reading Waiting For Change

Cauldron Lip

If you follow Howes Lane from Northowram to the point when it overlooks the Shibden Valley, you can get wonderful views across that valley towards Halifax. The industry, the heat, the life, and the movement of the town seem to spill over into the quiet valley. I have photographed this cauldron lip many times over … Continue reading Cauldron Lip

Fill In The Faces

Market stalls in Brighouse in the 1960s. Other than the little girl (who is probably just about to become a pensioner!) you can't see any faces. You don't need to. Your mind automatically fills in the missing detail. The faces lined by years of work. The complexions scarred by too much worry.

Kind Of Blue

The colour isn't particularly real - I must have added it at some stage in the fifty or so years since I took the original photograph. We tend, however, to think of Halifax back in the '60s and '70s in terms of black and white, forgetting that the mill-ponds could occasionally reflect blue skies. You … Continue reading Kind Of Blue

Spot The Nostalgia

This is a photograph of Bradford Road in Brighouse that I took back in the 1960s (back in the days when camera shutter speeds were too slow to freeze a passing wagon). Think of it as an exercise in nostalgia; a wistful version of Spot the Ball where you have to mark things that are … Continue reading Spot The Nostalgia

Nice, Yorkshire

I took a photograph in Derbyshire the other day. It was nice, and I thought I might use it as a calendar image. I took a photograph in Yorkshire yesterday. It was nice, and it was Yorkshire. It's my calendar image.

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

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