A seaside holiday: flat caps, thick overcoats, and a bench overlooking the sun-stroked sands. Watching the worm diggers and perhaps sharing a potted-meat sandwich. The sun casts shadows across the stone jetty, while the sea leaves ripples in the sand.
Category: Scanned Negatives
Earl Of Buffs
I've always worked on the principle that, if you're walking past a pub, you should take a picture of it and then pop in for a pint - in case it isn't there the next time you pass. I clearly adhered to this principle in the early 1980s when I passed the Earl of Arundel … Continue reading Earl Of Buffs
Set In Stone
You could walk to the top of Shaw Lane in Halifax today and take a photograph similar to this one. I took mine almost half a century ago, but the mills are still standing and the cobbles are still set in the road. The stonework is cleaner these days, and that sense of post-industrial abandonment … Continue reading Set In Stone
Peter Howell
We lost a dear friend of over fifty years last week. Peter Howell was a noted classicist, a distinguished architectural historian, and a former chair of the Victorian Society. Perhaps most of all, he was a wise, witty, and loyal friend. This has always been one of my favourite photographs of him. I took it … Continue reading Peter Howell
Sound Or Silence
Back in the 1980s, as I was slowly losing what little natural hearing I had left, I would often go to Cleethorpes. I was drawn, in particular, to the latticework of timber and iron struts beneath the pier. I have dozens of such photographs in my archives. There was something about the almost digital arrangement … Continue reading Sound Or Silence
Sheffield Arts
I took this photograph from the front door of the Sheffield house we were living in back in the early 1980s. The tall building is the splendid 20th-century University Arts Tower; the building next to it is the equally splendid 19th-century St George’s Hospital. The snow on the ground was pre-global warming, and the grey … Continue reading Sheffield Arts
Earlier
We have friends coming to visit this week - friends of over five decades - who have come to love our little bit of Yorkshire. We will see the sights, revisit familiar places and note the changes, and we will probably take photographs. Here's one I took earlier.
Nostalgia
Ah, those simple summer days of long ago - when Beacon Hill was bare of trees, when charity parades meant kids riding on the back of lorries, when King Street was cobbled, and when mill chimneys still split the sky. (Feel free to insert your own nostalgic meanderings as required.)
Deep History
For a long time, this was indexed under "unknown location" in my negative files, but a recent Google search allowed me to identify it as the former Hanley Deep Pit in Stoke-on-Trent. That means my photograph must date from the late 1960s or early 1970s, when I was at Keele University and the mine was … Continue reading Deep History