Great Yorkshire Pubs : The Malt Shovel, Harden

The Malt Shovel, Wilsden Rd, Harden, Bingley, West Yorkshire, BD16

On the moors above Harden, a few miles north-west of Bradford, there is supposed to be an ancient stone circle. There are also some prehistoric earthworks. General Fairfax camped his Civil War army in the fields just up the road, and the Bronte family lived only a few miles away. The whole area seems seeped in history and - like fruit that has been left soaking in a bowl of brandy - the buildings radiate a pungent warmth. Well, the Malt Shovel Inn certainly does.

The Malt Shovel is old : possibly seventeenth century, nobody seems to know.  It used to be owned by the de Ferrand family, but when their estate was broken up in 1919 the pub was sold for £1,476 : a decent sum back in those days and only a few pounds less than the price fetched by Harden Hall itself. Like so many country pubs, it has also served as a courtroom, an auction house and even a prison. There are surely worse places to be incarcerated.

Inside it is long and low : the way pubs should be. Real beams hold up a real ceiling and a hand-pump on the bar pulls real ale. I called in at lunch-time - it is rare these days to find a pub open at lunchtime - and soaked up some of the atmosphere, some of the history, and some of the Tetley Bitter. A little white dog came and sat under the table : didn't disturb me, just sat there as though it was part of the fixtures and fittings. A lovely Yorkshire pub, a visit to which makes the day worth living. What more can you ask for?

I Will See Your Market, And Raise You Another Market

It's always been the same, a kind of fraternal jealousy : what one does, the other tries to do better. So after I had posted my picture of Halifax Market yesterday, what does my brother do but post one of his sketches of the same scene. I haven't his permission to reproduce it here but he owes me the price of a new camera battery so I will just do it.

So, what he can do, I can do. Therefore at the top of this post is another picture of Halifax Market and this one dates back forty years or more (the prices of the goods are in pre-decimal money). My picture must pre-date his sketch as the central stall was still called "Under The Clock" in my picture rather than the more recent Max Crossley.

It's your move, dear brother!

Sunday Shopping

It is Sunday, and even though it is stormy and wet outside, the GLW will shortly announce that we are going shopping (shopping is the default activity of the GLW). I would prefer to stop at home and do nothing in particular (my default activity) but no doubt the lure of the shops will win this particular tug-of-matrimonial-war before the day is out. I will try suggesting that we should stay in and look at pictures of shops : but I doubt if this approach will be successful.

This is a picture of Halifax market. I can still remember the central fruit and vegetable stall (Max Crossley's) from when I was a young lad, indeed I think I have some old black and white shots taken fifty years ago of almost the same scene. The market was built in the last decade of the nineteenth century and is a spectacular glass and wrought iron construction surrounded - like the decorated edges of a fruit cake - by fine stone buildings. Originally it incorporated three pubs but I seem to think that only one of them remains. Indeed I am not sure if that is still open - I must go and check. "Hello love, do you fancy going to Halifax shopping this afternoon?"

Sepia Saturday 102 : Fish, Giraffes And Great Seals

The theme image this week was an extremely busy photograph entitled "Roadside Stand Near Birmingham, Alabama" by that great American photographer, Walker Evans. My matching shot is entitled "Auntie Miriam Near Noah's Ark, Blackpool" by that great Yorkshire photographer, Frank Fieldhouse (a.k.a. Uncle Frank).  Note how the photographer has cleverly balanced the composition so that it appears that a giraffe is stood on the lady's head and two sloping pediments spring forth out of her ears.

The Noah's Ark ride at Blackpool's famous Pleasure Beach was originally built in 1922 by William Homer Strickler, an American fairground construction engineer who was also responsible for building Blackpool's famous Big Dipper. Strickler must have regularly crossed the Atlantic because he was responsible for many of the famous fairground attractions of the North West of England and met his death in 1930 when he fell from a duplicate Noah's Ark he was building down the coast in Southport. My photograph captures the famous attraction in the mid 1930s when it had already undergone a couple of make-overs to its' external appearance. The internal workings - the cogs and the pulleys that made the floor shake and the animals move - remained the same and can still be seen to this day.

The giraffe, along with the 23 similar wooden animals that adorned the exterior, were added in the early 1930s and were designed by the famous British sculptor, Percy Metcalf. Born in Wakefield in 1895, Metcalf was a fascinating character who can best be described as a jobbing sculptor (I am sure he would have viewed such a description as a compliment as will the only other "jobbing sculptor" I can think of, my brother Roger). In addition to creating fairground animals, he designed pots, war memorials and car mascots. Perhaps he is most famous for his work with coins : he designed the first coinage of the Irish Free State and in 1940 he designed the George Cross medal. He was also involved in the design of the Great Seal of the Realm which is used to symbolise the Sovereign's approval of important state documents. There is something quite appealing about an artist who can turn his hand to ceremonial seals and wooden sea-lions will equanimity.

My first thought was that my photograph was a pale shadow of the level of activity of the Evans original. But. like any good old image, once you scratch under the surface layer of silver salts, there is an intriguing world on display.

TO SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE MAKE OF THIS WEEK'S THEME, GO TO THE SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG AND FOLLOW THE LINKS

Almost Wordless Thursday

We are back from Scarborough. There was a delicious out-of-season feel about the place, and it was well worth putting up with the chill wind that blew in from the North Sea in order to experience it. Words can't really describe the November mood, so I am going to let the pictures take centre stage.

Who knows when this sun-metre that stands proudly on the promenade was last set : certainly it wasn't any yesterday that I was there. But even in the damp mists of November there is a certain beauty about the thing : from the studied shading of the lettering to the graceful sweep of the pointer arrow.

The boat in the foreground is the MV Hatherleigh which is a former deep-sea trawler, floating museum, pirate-radio station and corporate hospitality vessel. Now it is a nice centre-piece to a foggy photograph.

This is one of two statues of swimmers that are located in Scarborough. This one is at the far end of the harbour, next to the lighthouse. I never managed to find the other. It was a foggy day.

The Scaffolding Of Dismantled Trees

Things are a little foggy around here. The damp fog rolls in waves down from the tops, folding over fields and hedges, making everything more prominent and less prominent all at the same time. Moisture condenses around  the bare branches that are now just the scaffolding of trees dismantled during the Autumn. And then there is my hearing.

The upgrade took place as planned on Friday and I am now the upgraded, improved Alan Burnett Series V. It is an odd thing when people start messing with your senses : everything is a bit odd, a bit different. My initial response is that sounds are much richer, fuller, more textured. In order to have some trusted yardstick, I am delving back into music I know well : does that flute sound clearer, does that piano sound more distinctive, can Louis Armstrong still blow the walls of the recording studio down with his horn solos? There are some down sides : but most of these are because I don't know my way around the new system yet. The telecoil which forms part of the implant doesn't seem as strong as the one in the previous version and this means that I am having trouble with the loop system I use for watching TV. I now get a poor signal when I sit in my chair, but I have discovered that if I lie of the settee with my head hanging off one end I get a much clearer sound signal. The downside of this arrangement is that the picture is then upside down.

But give me a week or two and I will get around these problems and learn to take full advantage of the greater control the new system provides. The fog will lift and everything will fall into sharp focus once more.

We are off to the coast for a couple of days, so I won't be around until Wednesday. See you all then  .... fog permitting.

Sepia Saturday 101 : Second Hand Memories

We have a Chevrolet as a theme prompt this week and if I look through my collection of old family photographs there are precious few motor cars. There are plenty of bicycles and tandems and a fair few motorbikes, but until the 1960s, I can't find any pictures of cars. I do know that during the 1930s my father did own - for a very brief period of time - a Morgan Super Sports Three Wheeler, but to the best of my knowledge no photographs exist of this splendid machine. The story goes that my proud father took my mother for a drive on the first day he owned the car and its' single rear wheel got stuck in a tram-line in Halifax and turned the entire vehicle over. My mother - shaken and stirred - refused to ever ride in my fathers' Morgan again and he sold it a week later. The above photographs is about sixty years old and must have been taken in Bradford. I have no idea who owned this particular car: but the two young lads posing on the running board are my brother and I. Equally, I have no idea what strange object my brother has on his hand : hopefully he will post in and enlighten us all.

In my second photograph, the car is owned rather than borrowed because by the 1960s my father had finally successfully graduated from motorbikes to cars. This particular Hillman Minx was his pride and joy and it would be polished and shined on a weekly basis. My particular job was to polish the chrome grills and bumpers : a dirty and thankless task that used to leave your hands battered and bruised. My fathers' cars were never new, he would buy them second-hand from the firm he used to work for - the Mackintosh's toffee and chocolate company. They would be ex-salesman's cars and therefore they would have been well used but cheap. He was a proud member of the company car club and you can just make out the Mackintosh's Auto Club badge on the front of the car.  Polishing that badge and that radiator grill until you could see your reflection in it -you can't buy memories like that : not even second-hand.

You can see many more Sepia Saturday 101 posts by following the links on the Sepia Saturday Blog.

Life Is For Living, Not For Laminating

A couple of years ago I picked up an Autumn leaf, brought it home and fed it through my laminating machine. Compressed in clear plastic laminate, that most glorious sight of Autumn was preserved on my desk for more than a year until eventually it vanished in the mysterious way things do. So today I tried to repeat the experiment and as Amydog and I went for our walk, I collected a good sample of leaves. I put a selection inside a laminate sheet and fed it into the machine : and then, alas, noticed that it was not emerging from the other side. A smell of burning plastic was soon accompanied by some severe black smoke and I hurriedly chucked the entire contraption out of the door. Which just goes to show that some things cannot be, shouldn't be, preserved. Life is for living, not for laminating.

Tomorrow is my new appointment for my personality upgrade. Wish me luck.

A Satisfying Curvature On Leeds Road

The English Crown Green Bowling season is long gone and whatever mediocre skills I had managed to develop during the summer months were in danger of evaporating like the wort in a Scotch Whisky still. But Sue, my crown green bowling mentor and guide, has discovered a way of holding back the cold winds of wintertime, so this morning the GLW and I joined her and Denis at the strange igloo contraption that has been erected at the Leeds Road Playing Fields in Huddersfield.

The Huddersfield Crown Green Dome is seemingly unique in the entire country : a 10.5 metre UPVC air-dome covering a 37 metre square artificial crown green bowling surface. There are traditional wooden benches around the edges, a coffee machine in the adjoining building and the surface has the kind of satisfying curvature that all good crown green bowlers enjoy. You still need to wear your winter woollies - it can be a little on the cool side - but it is dry and it is smooth and it is a lot cheaper than decamping to the Algarve for the off-season. "And is the green true?", I can hear you ask. Well my bowls finished up in the gutter with remarkable frequency, so I would say that it mimics a "proper" green rather well.

Scan Though Your Heart Is Aching

An old photograph sees the light of a new day. It is a family Christmas many years ago. You can tell it is Christmas because of the fake tree, the After Eight mints, the bottle of QC Sherry and the smile on the Good Lady Wife's face. But this was a good few years before she became the GLW and she was probably having to experience a Burnett Christmas for the first time. The weather is miserable today so I have been scanning old negatives. All together now : 

"Scan though your heart is aching 

Scan even though it's breaking 

When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by 

If you scan through your fear and sorrow 

Scan and maybe tomorrow 

You'll see the sun come shining through for you"

Punches, Pliers And Calipers

I would like to say that this is a picture of my workshop, but it isn't. It could have been a picture of the bench my father had at the back of his garage, or a picture of my brothers' eclectic studio and workshop in Dominica : but it isn't. It is a picture I took last week at the Shibden Hall Museum in Halifax. Behind the main Elizabethan house there is a collection of small craft cottages. This one was full of a diverse collection of punches, pliers and calipers : a delight to behold but, as far as their use is concerned, beyond my comprehension.

Sepia Saturday 100 : 190 KB Of Pleasure

So here we are at last - my Sepia Saturday 100 post. It wasn't a particularly difficult task to decide which photograph to use for this post : the above photograph of my mother and father - Gladys and Albert - seemed to tick almost all of the boxes. It is an image I have featured before and it is one of my favourite old photographs. Both Albert and Gladys were born in 1911 : 100 years ago. And you can almost see the figure of 100 spelled out in the tandem wheels and struts. But, more than anything, it illustrates the wealth of the photographic image as an art form, as a record of social history, and as a stimulant to the memory.

The size of the above image file is about 190KB : not particularly large by modern standards, but still the equivalent of twenty or thirty pages of formatted text. The relationship between the sizes of text and image files is a modern proof of the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. But those words, those bits, those bytes are not wasted : for within the humble image can be found a treasure-trove of information. Look at those socks on my father and the way the pattern is woven into the thick wool. Look at the face in the window on the left : observing the scene whilst drinking her morning cup of tea. Look at the sign for Castrol Oil attached to the bay-window of a terraced house like a fish out of a watery soup. Look at the bicycle pump, the hats, the cast iron fences : set your eye and your imagination free to graze the rich pastures of those 190KB

That's the magic of images, And the particular magic of old images is that you are allowed to wander through a foreign land : the past. It is the best entertainment you can get without picking up a pint glass. It is Sepia Saturday.

To see all of the other posts celebrating Sepia Saturday 100 go to the SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG and follow the centenary links.

Inheriting The Genetic Material

The stuff of Sepia Saturday is not just old family photographs : it is old photographs of all kinds. Over the last 99 weeks many people have used old postcards as the starting point for their Sepia Saturday musings - and they have always proved to be particularly effective prompts. As I have said many times before, there is a particular affinity between postcards and blogging : the people who sent those pictorial messages one hundred years ago were undoubtedly made of the same genetic material as todays' bloggers. That need to send a message out into the world, to contact people from far away, to share thoughts, ideas and sights - all these are the common currency of the Edwardian postcard sender and the twenty-first century blogger. 

All we can hope is that the blog posts of today are as sturdy and capable of withstanding the test of time as those old pastecard offerings. All we can hope is that in 100 years time there is a new generation of bloggers (or whatever medium has inherited the genetic material) gathering together every Saturday to share the thoughts and the images of the blogging pioneers.

DON'T FORGET IT IS SEPIA SATURDAY 100 THIS SATURDAY. PLEASE VISIT THE SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG TO JOIN IN THE CELEBRATIONS

Fixing Them For Eternity

This coming Saturday will mark the 100th Sepia Saturday : quite a milestone for something which started as a bit of a joke between Kat Mortensen and myself. Even though its' origin can be found in a convenient alliteration, its' mission was always serious : to preserve and share old images via the internet. Within a few weeks, Sepia Saturday had attracted a number of loyal weekly contributors and followers, and over the last two years it has gone from strength to strength. For Sepia Saturday 100 we are asking contributors old and new to join in with a post that is linked to the list on the Sepia Saturday Blog. As a lead-up to Sepia Saturday itself I am going to spend the week looking at all types of old image and I am starting with one of the most popular types of all - the old family photograph.

This is a scan of a tiny two inch square print which must have been taken at a family celebration. The young child being held at the front of the picture is, I suspect, my brother Roger which means that the photograph must have been taken in the mid 1940s.

We can be a little more certain about the others in the group because someone has attached a convenient yellow sticker to the back (and it looks as though it is my writing). Thus, I can tell you that on the back row (from the left) is my paternal grandfather, Enoch Burnett, my uncles Wilf and Harry (the musical workhorse), and my maternal grandfather Albert Beanland. The centre row has my grandmothers Harriet-Ellen Burnett and Kate Beanland, whilst the front row features my Auntie Amy, my mother, my Auntie Annie ... and the mysterious child. My father is missing from the picture (but he would have been taking it) and so am I : I had yet to make an appearance. When I took the photograph out of the box that contains all my old family photographs the yellow sticker had all but fallen off : that precious key to the identification of three generations of my family was almost lost. This post has given me the opportunity to fix the identifications for all time, to attach a digital sticker to the image which will stay there for all time and which will be available to anyone who cares to do a Google search.

And that, of course, was partly what Sepia Saturday was all about. We are the first generation that has had access to such powerful archiving tools. Many of us are the keepers of old images of one type or another. It is our task to fix them for eternity.

Sepia Saturday 99 : Harry The Musical Workhorse

The theme photograph over at Sepia Saturday this week features a band and therefore I am trying to think musically. This is not easy, for the love affair between me and music is entirely one way : I love music and music detests any attempt by me to interpret its' precious muse. The familial hills of the Burnett family were never fully alive with the sound of music : my father would occasionally assault the concertina and grandfather Enoch, I am given to understand, played a not-particularly-mean euphonium. To arrive at proper musical talent we need to leave blood behind and say hello to Uncle Harry.

Harry Moore married my fathers' sister, Annie Elizabeth Burnett in 1933. Just before the marriage he was working as a professional entertainer, touring the country as part of a pierrot show called "The Silhouettes" (See Sepia Saturday 56 for more information). The above photograph probably dates from the early 1930s and shows Uncle Harry (right) taking part in a revue : for some reason Sigmund Romberg's Student Prince springs to mind. Following his marriage, Harry retired from full-time entertaining and combined a day-job as a coal merchant's clerk with evening and weekend work as a pianist in a series of West Yorkshire working men's clubs. His task would be to provide backing for any featured vocalists in addition to providing musical interludes between the comics and the conjurers.

It was the kind of job that made him a musical workhorse - someone who could turn his piano-playing hand to any occasion, be it a family funeral or a joyous wedding. So, if we were in need of some entertainment for the forthcoming 100th birthday party of Sepia Saturday (don't forget, it's next week), he would be just the chap to send for.

GO OVER TO THE SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG TO SEE THE OTHER PARTICIPANTS IN SEPIA SATURDAY 99. AND DON'T FORGET SEPIA SATURDAY 100 IS NEXT WEEK - WHY NOT JOIN US FOR THIS SPECIAL OCCASION.

British Pub Week : The One And Seven-penny Pint

Staying with British Pub week, my picture today features a part of a pub sign I noticed as I was out walking through Halifax on Monday. The pub is the Beehive and Cross Keys which was built in 1932 following the demolition of two earlier pubs : yes, you guessed, the Beehive and the Cross Keys. Both these earlier pubs had been owned by the Swift family and in the 1880s, Henry Swift, established a brewery behind the Cross Keys in the splendidly named Spice Cake Lane. Road widening in the 1930s swept away the earlier pubs, the brewery and - perhaps most tragically of all - Spice Cake Lane.

The new pub was a functional 1930s affair designed by local architects Walsh and Maddocks. Functional it may have been, but in addition to the more traditional inn sign at the front of the premises, the builders set two fine mosaics into the side wall. I seem to recall that the Beehive and Cross Keys was the first pub I ever bought a pint of beer in. I was a little under age and trying to cover my innocence with bravado. The landlord pulled the pint and I handed him one shilling and sixpence. "When did you last buy a pint of beer?" he asked somewhat severely. I looked at him in puzzlement trying to cover my embarrassment. "Nay Lad", he continued, "it's one and sevenpence now".

British Pub Week : A Pint With Branwell

It is British Pub Week this week and I am doing my little bit to help by visiting as many pubs as possible. Yesterday it was the turn of the Old Cock Hotel in Halifax to receive a visit. The building has existed for some 420 years and I have been around for sixty-odd of those, but I have to confess that yesterday was the first time I have set foot in what is one of Halifax's most ancient inns (so many pubs, so little time!). It was originally built in the 1580s as a private house by William Saville of Copley but 100 years later it was already listed as an inn. Situated in the centre of the town it has always been a popular meeting point for local organisations and societies : the Halifax Harmonic Society met here and the Halifax Building Society came into being after a meeting in the first floor Oak Room. On a more dubious note, David Hartley - the leader of the eighteenth century Cragg Vale criminal gang of counterfeiters - was arrested whilst enjoying a pint in the Old Cock and soon afterwards put to death at Tyburn in York. Like any half-decent West Yorkshire pub, the Old Cock also has a Branwell Bronte story : in the 1840s he ran up such large bills at the Old Cock that the landlord was forced to write to his father in Haworth demanding payment.

I sat in the quiet lunchtime bar, enjoying a pint of Timothy Taylor and looking around at the gaudy Halloween decorations on display. The headless corpses and ghostly apparitions had been bought in bulk from the local  Fancy Dress shop. They need not have bothered - there was history and terror enough leeching out of the very fabric of the building. I had a chat with Branwell, drunk up and left, making sure that I had paid for my pint. I don't want any letters of complaint being sent, nor do I want to visit Tyburn Hill.