Just for a change, I know precisely where I took this photograph from some forty-odd years ago. The houses are still there, pinned to the side of Southowram Bank with all the gravity-defying stubbornness that only a Yorkshire builder can demonstrate. It is Blaithroyd Lane, Halifax, and if you turn to Google Street View or … Continue reading A Perspective On Age
Category: Scanned Negatives
Some Escape
This old photograph of mine dates from fifty years ago and it shows a mill fire escape somewhere in Halifax. The good old days, before all this health and safety nonsense, when your mill could catch fire at the drop of a fag end, and a swift exit down the fire escape would give you … Continue reading Some Escape
Temporal Adrenalin
Most of us respond positively to a challenge. I don't mean serious, grown-up challenges such as dry rot in your floorboards or your wife running off with the milkman, but life-enhancing challenges such as climbing a mountain or collecting matchbox labels. For some people it is pedalling a bike backwards up a very steep hill … Continue reading Temporal Adrenalin
Hunting A Finisher
Old Haligonians in their hundreds came forward yesterday to pin down the location of the photo of, what I though was, Gaol Lane: it appears that it was, in fact, most likely the adjacent Ann Street. During the day I was sent several old maps of this particular part of Halifax, and the fascinating exercise … Continue reading Hunting A Finisher
Go To Gaol
At some stage in the late 1960s, large sections of the bottom end of Halifax were demolished. These were the streets that ran from Market Street, down to the appropriately named Winding Road. They are etched into my youthful memory - longer, grander, greater than they undoubtedly were - but their names are largely lost … Continue reading Go To Gaol
Salt, Pepper And Hillside
I must have taken this photograph in the late 1960s or early 70s. The two Halifax cooling towers - affectionately known as Salt and Pepper - were demolished in 1974. The first attempt to blow them up was remarkably unsuccessful, and a giant wrecking ball had to be brought in to complete the job. Between … Continue reading Salt, Pepper And Hillside
The Price Of Coal
This was taken at the Yorkshire Miners' Gala in Doncaster in 1982, just before the ill-fated miners' strike (1984-85). Within five years of it being taken, most of the Yorkshire pits were gone. Eternal vigilance was clearly too high a price.
PIER REVIEW
I spent a few weeks in Eastbourne in the early 1980s. My wife and my friends were all working, I was left to wander the streets and promenades, taking photographs. When it rained, I would go into the County Court and listen to trials. Strange times.
Station Steps
The last two negatives on this particular strip from the 1980s feature Halifax Railway Station. I have always been fascinated by stone steps. The area around my home town of Halifax has an abundance of hills and stone, and therefore stone steps are as common as hop houses in Kent. This fine example is, I … Continue reading Station Steps
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