What else is there to do during lockdown than visit the past? Therefore, I scan to survive; and the strip of negatives that took the journey across the scanner today included a set of photos shot in a typically West Yorkshire field some fifty years ago.
In the first photograph the field divide is a typically Yorkshire dry stone wall. In the next two shots it is something even more distinctive of the area around Halifax, Elland and Southowram, where stone quarries provided a constant crop of high quality flag stones during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. These great stone slabs were like ancient monoliths, dominating the skyline. Many have vanished over the last half century - they must have quite an intrinsic value in their own right - but a few still remain, although they have been partly lost in the post-industrial growth of trees and shrubs.
Escaping from my lockdown yesterday, for a precious hour in the fresh air, I found this surviving example in a lane about a quarter of a mile from where I live.
Amazing...I had no idea what I was looking at. And many people have flagstone patios. Except here, stones of various sizes are sold along most roads...people like to have stone facings on their walls here in the Appalachian Mountains. And maybe a stone fireplace also.
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