Old Station, New Castle

 

We are back with the reality of the old after yesterday's brief flirtation with the imagined future! I always call this particular photo of mine (dating from around 1980) "Halifax Before Eureka," as it shows the spot where the Eureka National Children's Museum was later built. The curve of the railway line heads away from Halifax - and, from tomorrow, so will I for a few days.

We're off on our travels for a few days, so a change of scenery from those old, run-down northern industrial views you have come to expect from me. Yes, that's right: Newcastle, here we come.

I accept that I am old and therefore I should complain about everything, but I must confess the train journey up here was excellent, the city of Newcastle looks splendid, and the sun is shining like a lifted tariff. Hello Newcastle.

We spend hours walking the streets of that great big architectural theme park that is Newcastle Upon Tyne, in constant danger of walking into lampposts as we gaze up at the ever-changing skyline. Bridges appear from the rooftops of Victorian offices, cathedrals and castles nestle up to Edwardian shopping arcades. It's a grand place.

Snap, Cackle And Pop (And A Coin)

 

There is something rather special about a "Walking Snap" - those brief moments of history captured in the click of a seaside shutter. Armies of seasonal photographers would stalk the piers and promenades of endless seaside resorts, snapping holidaymakers and displaying memories in grubby shop windows. Here's my mother and my brother in Bridlington some 75 year ago.

It is more usual to find Roman coins buried deep in a farmer's field or in the grounds of a Roman villa. This coin, however, I discovered at the bottom of a drawer while carrying out an excavation to find a new blade for my pencil sharpener. I've no idea of the date, but I have a feeling it might be Roman. Not much use for sharpening my pencil, however.

A photograph from the early 1980s showing my father watching, somewhat wistfully, as the last remnants of the old Charlestown Railway Viaduct in Halifax are being demolished. This leaves him with a clear view of the Albion Mills and Bailey Hall factories of John Mackintosh, where he spent the last 25 years of his working life.

So many of my photographs of Halifax were taken 50 or 60 years ago, so for a change, I thought I might post a more contemporary view. So today, I went to the top of Beacon Hill and took a photograph of Halifax as it is now. You would hardly believe the changes that have taken place!

Broken Crafts And Rescued Shadows

 

When my time comes, I wouldn't mind a memorial like this. There's an appropriate look of regret at the passing of the person whose grave she keeps watch over (at a cemetery in Bradford). There's none of your "it's a blessed relief" or "we can now clear the house of all his junk". Just misery carved in granite.

I've shared this photograph of Blackledge in Halifax before - not on my daily calendar, however - but it warrants a second outing. I think it was about 1982 when I took it, and Beacon Hill was just beginning to gather the verdant covering we are familiar with today. If you ever needed to give Halifax a subtitle, the Arts and Crafts Town would be a good start.

There is a real pleasure in finding an old photograph - in this case probably more than 125 years old - which is fading into obscurity and being scratched and torn towards extinction, and rescuing it and sharing it. It doesn't matter that you don't know who she is - I don't either - what matters is that together we have brought her back to something near life.

We are quite proud of our gibbet here in Halifax. For those unfamiliar with the town and its somewhat unique approach to the punishment of petty criminals, a gibbet was an early form of guillotine used in Halifax to decapitate thieves between the 13th and 17th centuries. The gibbet featured in the photo I took the other day is a far more recent installation dating back to 2008 and it is now used to decapitate shadows.

Unknowns, Throw-Outs, Post Cards and Teeth

 

It is now sixty years since I came across this scene - somewhere above Claremount Road in Halifax if I remember rightly - but it's a sight I'll never forget. It's almost as though someone had carefully composed the scene, bringing together car, cart, bathtub and a couple of old masters in order to create a surrealistic vision on the hills above Halifax.

There is something rather sad about the fact that this is an unknown family member - such a characterful face, such a promising pose, should never become unknown. But she lives on, she graces multiple streams of social media, she continues to radiate charm, long after the horse-hair stuffing has deserted the armchair.

I miss picture postcards: that unique combination of image and words and that alignment of the public picture and the private message. They have survived a century or more and provide us with a bookmark for all our history and for all our yesterdays. This one - featuring the Scottish town of Alexandria - was sent to my Great Uncle Fowler Beanland and was passed down the generations to me. Try doing that with a text message!

I took the photograph that was the start of this image the other day as I wandered around Halifax waiting for my dental appointment. Since then, I have poked and prodded it, scraped and flossed it, and finished up with something which is quite pleasant to look at. Not sure you can say the same thing about my teeth, however.

Steps, Snaps, Slips And Selo

 

I'm not entirely sure which stone staircase in Halifax this was; there were - and there still are - dozens of them: over rivers and railway lines, over roads, and over nothing in particular. We just like steps in these parts; they break the monotony of life, they keep us fit, and they create dramatic patterns for itinerant photographers.

I live my life in line with a number of philosophical precepts - one of the most important of which is "never walk past a pub without taking a photo of it as it might not be there the next time you pass!" When I passed the Robin Hood pub in Brighouse back in 2009, I both took the required photo and, to celebrate, popped in for a pint. It was a good job i did - it's a supermarket car park now.

In the best part of the five years I have been sharing my picture-a-day calendar, I have tried to avoid using the same image more than once, but occasionally I have slipped up. I now realise that I used this photo of mine of Halifax in the 1980s back in September 2024. This is a "messed-about" version of it however, so hopefully I will be forgiven.

I went digging in one of the endless boxes of old photographs that are slowly taking over our house and came up with not a photograph, but a colourful envelope used to deliver negatives and prints back in the 1930s. Oh, you digital slaves of Smarty McSmart phones, you don't know what you are missing - non-curling roll films, self-toning paper, and prints that are full of life and sparkle.

A Spanner, A Brook, A Bear And A View From A Railway Carriage

 

I'm getting old. More and more, I seem to be sitting at my desk messing around with old photographs rather than getting out and about taking new ones. The original of this photo was taken in March 2016 from a train leaving Bradford and heading for Halifax, but this version was created while sitting at my desk last night. I've always been attracted to these shapes and colours. But, there again, I'm getting old.

The Hebble Brook has an odd relationship with the town of Halifax. Over history, it has had such a defining impact on the town, carving its valleys and draining its hills, and yet now it slips almost unnoticed towards its rendezvous with the Calder - sometimes above ground, sometimes culvert-deep in the darkness. I demand a "We Love The Hebble Day" with lantern-boats and coloured streamers.

A very good old friend came to visit yesterday and we went for lunch to a very good old inn. I've been visiting the Old White Beare in Norwood Green for more than half a century, but that's only a moment in the life of this 500-year-old village pub. Some of the timbers within the pub are even older, having been part of an Elizabethan galleon that took on the Spanish Armada. Seated within such history, we felt quite young.

I've given this photo the title "Albert and the Giant Spanner". As far as I can be certain, that is my father, Albert, on the left, which would mean that the photograph was taken about 1930 when he was a young apprentice in Bradford. I'm not sure what the giant spanner was used for, but it's a great photograph.

My Daily Calendar : 9th - 12th March 2025 : Market, Mills, Love And Rain

 

This picture is taken from an old picture postcard and shows Doncaster Market Place in the early years of the twentieth century. A long time ago. I worked in Doncaster during the 1980s and I became very familiar with the Market Place and its many pubs, bars and restaurants. A different time, a different life. A long time ago.

The mills, the houses, and even the blocks of flats seem to conform to the natural contours in this photograph of mine of Halifax forty-odd years ago. Power, religion and industry, however, strike a very different note. Each reaches for the sky in search of its own deity.

Another of my "Found Photos", and the only clue is a written greeting on the back of the photograph which says, "With love from Hilda and Leo". You don't need any more information than that; your imagination can write the entire novel. It's a story two people caught in the shifting sands of history.

Grey rain on grey roof slates and smoke dawdling out of endless chimneys: two of the memories of my youth that are encapsulated in this photograph of mine of Brighouse back in the 1960s. Close your eyes and you can smell the smoke; put out your hand and you can feel the rain.

My Daily Calendar : 5th - 8th March 2025 : Gog, Odd, Faces And Places

 

Gog Hill used to be an important thoroughfare in Elland, cobble-climbing from Elland Bridge up the steep hillside to the top of the town. It was lined by houses that clung to the hillside with stoney determination. For many years it has been abandoned by everything but empty lager cans and cheap thrills. The signs live on - testament to a different age.

Sometimes there is no point to be made, no memories to be revived, and no surprises to be released. Sometimes there is just a nice view and the chance to step back and appreciate it. This is just down the road from where I live. This is grand.

This is not one of my photos: I suspect it was taken by my wife's uncle. It is a view over Elland from Dewsbury Road as it makes its way up Upper Edge. It must date from the 1960s or early 70s, the period before the construction of Elland by-pass which, today, cuts across this scene. There is something odd about the fields and roads in the background, they don't seem to fit in with what I know of the area.

This is another from my "Faces Of Halifax" series - Victorian and Edwardian portraits created by Halifax photographic studios. This couple visited the studio of E Greaves on Silver Street, Halifax towards the end of the nineteenth century to have their likeness captured, and what a stunning likeness it is. This is the Victorian equivalent of a selfie.