Category: Old Halifax

Busy Line

I think I took this photograph from part way up Southowram Bank back in the 1960s. The image captures the almost sensual curve of the main railway line as it carves a way between mills and factories from Beacon Hill tunnel to Halifax Station. Square Church can be seen unsuccessfully competing for attention with the … Continue reading Busy Line

Headscarves And Unwashed Spuds

I took this photo 50+ years ago. I never printed it, it somehow didn’t seem worth the paper. From a technical point of view, it hasn’t improved with time, but it has become more resonant. It speaks of the past - of headscarves and unwashed spuds.

Halfway To Paradise

You’ve got to have a certain sense of humour to name a street “Paradise Street”. You might just get away with it with a row of mansions overlooking a sun-drenched beach in the Caribbean: but not a back street in Halifax. But who knows, a house to live in and a cobbled street to park … Continue reading Halfway To Paradise

Halifax’s Plastic Skittle

Memory is a great trickster. Ask me for one of my most endearing visual memories of Halifax in the 1960s and 70s and I will tell you about the 14 foot high plastic bowling pin that used to grace the top of the Halifax Bowl at the junction of Broad Street and Orange Street. I … Continue reading Halifax’s Plastic Skittle

A Smooth And Symphonic Final Journey

These two cuttings come from a crumbling old copy of the Halifax Courier and Guardian dated the 4th February 1922 which I found in the attic. The big news of the day was not the economic and political crisis that Britain was going through, nor was it the developing Irish Civil War: it was the … Continue reading A Smooth And Symphonic Final Journey

Way Back When

This was taken way back when - when industry still clung to the hillsides of Halifax, when machine tools, along with carpets and toffees provided employment for the town, when the hillsides were treeless, and when washing was optimistically hung out to dry in the smokey breeze.

The Steps To The Station

Steps To The Station, 1982 : The last scan from this strip of negatives of Halifax from 40 years ago. The steps still exist but the lamp-post and the top wall have gone - and what remains isn't quite as soot-black as it was back then. Steps in the right direction, perhaps.

Blackledge, Halifax 1982

A snow covered and tree-less Beacon Hill provides the background to this photograph of mine from the early 1980s of Blackledge, Halifax. A parked car provides a date-stamp as resonant as any digital imprint. Pennine arts and crafts, indeed.