I have just acquired this lovely old vintage postcard of Stump Cross, near Halifax. It is a view I am well familiar with, based on a thousand bus journeys home - although those journeys would have been fifty years after this photograph was taken in the early years of the twentieth century. When I regularly … Continue reading A Circuitous Route To Huddersfield
Tag: Halifax
Great Questions Of Our Time No. 376 and 377
I know what a burlesque artist is, and I have seen a good few comediennes: but what, in the name of all that is risqué, is a "serio"? Perhaps Miss Mollie May can enlighten us. And whilst we are at it, whatever happened to smoking concerts?
Halifax Borough Market And Architectural Football
I was scanning some of my old negatives yesterday and came across this photograph of Halifax Borough market, which dates from around 1967 (say what you want about decimalisation, it provides invaluable help in dating old photographs). Halifax's indoor market was - and still is - one of the finest examples of these Victorian cast-iron … Continue reading Halifax Borough Market And Architectural Football
Halifax In Transition 1
In 1966 I took a walk around Godley Road and Beacon Hill in Halifax, taking photographs looking down on the town from the hillside. Halifax was already in transition - the mills were falling and the tower blocks rising - and the new Burdock Way would shortly cut through this part of town.
Fire In Halifax
These are four photographs I took in Halifax in the late 1960s. I remember the day well: I was walking up towards the library at Belle Vue when I came across a fire in one of the mills towards the bottom of Pellon Lane. I have published individual shots from this sequence before, but here … Continue reading Fire In Halifax
No More Nahums
I took this photograph of Salterhebble Hill in Halifax in the late 1960s for someone who wanted it as evidence in claim for compensation following an accident. Looking at it now, it is fascinating to see long-forgotten buildings such as Nahum's Union Mill standing where the Water Mill pub and restaurant now stands. This area … Continue reading No More Nahums
Park Pride
Old picture postcards provide us with a fine indication of what people saw as important about the area in which they lived or they were visiting. On some occasions they would reflect great industrial or commercial achievement: tall mills, railway viaducts that put mother nature in her place, or busy street scenes full of shops, … Continue reading Park Pride
With Halifax As A Backdrop
On a regular trawl through my old negatives, I came across one of my favourite photographs from almost fifty years ago. It shows two young girls with the familiar sights of 1970s Halifax as a backdrop. Those two young girls from all those years ago are still part of my life: I married the one … Continue reading With Halifax As A Backdrop
A Walk Along A Windy Promenade
During the first decade of the twentieth century, when picture postcard collecting became the height of fashion, postcards would often be only loosely based on photographs. The photographic image would be simplified, artificially coloured, pixelated, corrected and prepared for the printing presses; and this would sometimes result in images that were only distant relatives of … Continue reading A Walk Along A Windy Promenade
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