Category: Scanned Negatives

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.

City In The Sky

PARK SQUARE, SHEFFIELD (c1983) I must have take this photograph of the iconic Hyde Park and Park Hill flats in Sheffield when I was living in the city in the 1980s. Some fifteen years earlier - as a young man, I should point out - I remember being part of a delegation visiting the development … Continue reading City In The Sky

Halifax Shapes

HALIFAX MARKET (c1968) I think I took this photograph in Halifax Borough Market over fifty years ago. I can't be sure: what with a memory as grainy as my negatives and an incomplete on-line database of market stall holders. However, L Chapman's sounds familiar, and, anyway, these are Halifax shapes. The taut headscarves, the Summer … Continue reading Halifax Shapes

Steam Geolocation

TINSLEY WEST SIGNAL BOX, SHEFFIELD (c1983) The kids these days have it easy: pick up their smartphones, click the button, and applecadabra they have a photograph which is automatically dated and geolocated to within a metre of where they are standing. When I was a young lad - alright, when I was pushing middle age … Continue reading Steam Geolocation

Donkey Hill, Halifax

This cobbled way which runs from Old Lane up to Woodside in Halifax, is popularly known as Donkey Hill, although you will probably have difficulty finding that name used on any official map. Countless generations of Halifax folk have memories of sledging down the steep hill as children in winters, and early morning walks to … Continue reading Donkey Hill, Halifax

The Great Wall Of Northowram

Howes Lane, Northowram This is another of my photographs taken in Howes Lane, Northowram around fifty years or so ago. This time it is looking towards the head of Shibden Valley, in the direction of Ambler Thorn. The photograph captures one of the great walls of Northowram, a huge stone structure built to enclose a … Continue reading The Great Wall Of Northowram

Repetitive Overspill

Halifax and Shibden Valley (c1967) As I trawl through my old photographs I frequently discover the same scene captured again and again - at different times, in different seasons and different years. Often this is not a conscious thing: at the time I can't remember having taking the same photograph before - it is only … Continue reading Repetitive Overspill

A Patch Of Land

This is a photograph showing the lower part of Halifax, which I must have taken in the 1960s. There is a mist - or perhaps a fog - clinging to the town and making it sufficiently difficult to pinpoint actual buildings, there is an element of challenge about it. What can be clearly seen are … Continue reading A Patch Of Land