I met my love by the gas works wall, Dreamed a dream by the old canal. These are four photographs from the same strip of negatives, which I must have taken some fifty years ago. At about that time I was doing a summer job in the warehouse of Riding Hall Carpets which was just … Continue reading By The Gas Works Walls

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

In reviewing my old negatives, it appears as if I spent a large part of my youth walking up and down Shaw Lane in Halifax. Here is a triptych of views from a strip of negatives shot in the 1970s. I am particularly fond of that final image - it sums up so much about … Continue reading A Shaw Lane Triptych

This is an illustration from a book I have yet to write, which - in my own mind, at least - is entitled "Monochrome Valley".  It shows Bank Bottom in Halifax in the early 1970s. Square Church spire and  Halifax Parish Church fight to be seen through the industrial smoke. I have a feeling that … Continue reading Monochrome Valley

This is a new scan of a photograph I took over 50 years ago, and it shows the Halifax Charity Gala parade in 1965 passing the old Ramsden's Stone Trough Brewery building (RIP) at Ward's End, with the ever-present Victoria Theatre in the mid-distance.

A strip of medium format negatives dating from the 1980s is the next to go on my scanning machine. I took these photographs whilst on a walk down Shaw Lane in Halifax, at a time of transition for the town. The last of the mills that had been at the heart of the economic and … Continue reading Dark Forgotten Mills