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.
Category: Old Halifax
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.
A Royal Visit To Halifax, 1863
In August 1863, the Prince of Wales - the future King Edward VII - visited Halifax to perform the opening ceremony of the newly built Town Hall. It had been hoped that his mother, Queen Victoria, would perform the opening ceremony but she was still in deep mourning following the death of her husband two … Continue reading A Royal Visit To Halifax, 1863
Terrible Tragedy In Halifax
Don't you just get fed up with the state of the modern media, with all the sensational headlines, lurid stories and titillating images designed to get you to follow links to stories that never live up to what they promised? Take me back to the good old days when serious writers upheld the very highest … Continue reading Terrible Tragedy In Halifax
