Category: Old Halifax

The Gaumont Grandeur Of Halifax

To me it is, and has always been, the Gaumont Cinema. It’s had other names and been other things, but even today I would probably still refer to it as the Gaumont. The surprising thing is that it has only had that name for a comparatively short period of its 107 year history; for just … Continue reading The Gaumont Grandeur Of Halifax

Transported By A Slogan

GEORGE STREET, HALIFAX (1960s) Images can be evocative: they can conjure up feelings and emotions with the skill of a practiced magician - but so too can phrases. This is another of my "night shots" from the mid to late 1960s: neither the darkness nor the passage of five decades can hide the magnificent frontage … Continue reading Transported By A Slogan

The Days Before Burdock

This old image has gone through quite a journey. It was far from perfect when it started life, 55 years or so ago: the focus was suspect and the composition could have been improved by some selective demolition work. At an early stage in its life it got converted from a negative into a positive … Continue reading The Days Before Burdock

Basin Street Blues

A determination to catch the last of the late summer sun took me to Brighouse Canal Basin yesterday, and a determination to scan my way through all my old photographs also took me to the same place - albeit fifty-three years earlier. The canal basin was looking glorious in the sunshine. A few late flowers … Continue reading Basin Street Blues

Service At The Inn

This is a picture I must have taken in the mid to late 1960s. It shows the Crispin Service Station on Winding Road, Halifax. It is no use going looking for it now because it is long gone and it is the buildings that stood here before that I am primarily interested in. As is … Continue reading Service At The Inn

Odeon Memories

I took this photograph - looking towards Waterhouse Street from Orange Street, Halifax - one dark, rainy night over half a century ago. In some ways, not a lot has changed over those five and a half decades - the bowling alley on the left is now a hotel, the roundabout is gone, and the … Continue reading Odeon Memories

The Streets Of Elland

This is a series of photographs taken in Elland, Yorkshire, sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. Looking at the individual photographs, I can almost trace the route I took through the bottom end of the town. It was part of Elland that had been recently detached from the rest of the town by the building … Continue reading The Streets Of Elland

Halifax As It Was

GAS WORKS & RAILWAY SIDINGS FROM NORTH BRIDGE, HALIFAX Looking back at this photograph I must have taken sometime around 1968, it has a staged feeling to it, as though it has been carefully posed as an album cover for a Champion Jack Dupree LP. It wasn't staged, however, nor were the colour tampered with. … Continue reading Halifax As It Was

Straight Lines And Edges

This is Elland in the 1970s. The harsh straight lines of lampposts and mill chimneys stand out in sharp contrast from the curve of Upper Edge in the background. One of the mills is now long-gone, the other has been converted into apartments. The lampposts are still there - and so is the hill.