The Halifax Tram Strike

One rainy Sunday evening in July 1906, the Number 94 tram from Shelf to Halifax ran out of control while coming down New Bank, overturned, and slid over North Bridge. Two passengers were killed and 12 were injured. It is said that the driver, Theodore Chadwick, did all he could to try to slow the tram down, but he was still dismissed by the Tramways Committee. This led to the 1906 Halifax Tram Strike, which eventually ended in September that year.

Mainlining Memories

This photo is the result of a random dip into my archives. I took it forty years ago during a visit to Athens. I seem to recall that we stopped at the café you can see near the top of the street. That is the wonder of photographs: they mainline memories.

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 already closed down and awaiting redevelopment.

Escaping The Mill

 

The telegraph poles provide the date stamp for this photograph of a mill fire escape in Halifax. At some point over the fifty-six years since I took it, I seem to have decided that it was somewhere near Akroyd Place, just outside the town centre. Time, however, has changed the landscape and eroded any meaningful memories I may have had.

Sheffield Days

 

This photograph dates back to my Sheffield days in the 1980s - days of grey and white and miners’ strikes. I’d probably just got off the bus, and as I skated down the ice-covered streets, I stopped to record the scene.

Ivy Rose

 

This is a photo of my father’s cousin, Ivy Burnett, probably taken in Birmingham around 1910. It bears the mark of the Hamnett Studio of Bristol Street, Birmingham, and records show the studio was active at that address between 1908 and 1912. Ivy was born in Birmingham in 1908, so 1910 seems like a good estimate - although the clothes she is wearing look more like late 19th-century styles.

Busy Elland

I can't be exact about the date, but I suspect it was around 1969 or 1970 when I took this photograph. It looks as though I was standing in the grounds of what later became the Barge and Barrel pub, but back then it would have still been the Station Hotel. My photograph captures a busy canal side with the town of Elland in the background.

Stone Doubles

 

Isn't AI wonderful? You can ask your favourite AI assistant to convert a selfie into a stone carving like the kind found on the walls of a medieval church. Alternatively, you can take a walk around Selby Abbey and discover that someone has already done it. Aren't medieval stone masons wonderful?

Skye Sky

 

A random dip into my archives brings up this photograph I took twenty years ago during a visit to the Isle of Skye. Despite the undoubted beauty of all those greens, browns and blues: the shot still seems to work better as a black and white picture. Your imagination can then paint it in whatever colours you choose.

Wedding Bells

I am attending a wedding this weekend, and I have dusted off my camera so that I can take photographs of what will be a splendid family occasion. It will continue a long tradition: I took the photographs at the wedding of the groom’s grandparents, and also at the wedding of his parents. Today's photograph goes back even further than that, but I should point out that I was not the photographer on that occasion.

 

History Preserved

 

My photograph dates back to the 1960s and shows the Mobil petrol station on Winding Road, Halifax. The garage was built on the site of the Old Crispin Inn, which dated back to the 1840s. That inn was itself built on the site of an even older Crispin Inn, a famed meeting place of local radicals and Luddites. When the Old Crispin Inn was demolished, parts of it were preserved at Shibden Hall Museum. When the petrol station was demolished, parts of it weren't.