Certain Bridges And Wide Bad Photos

 

A moment snatched from history: a gathering of objects, people and places. At one time they meant something to someone - your Aunty Bess, or Jean's mother before her stroke. Now the objects and people rearrange themselves and mean something about the passage of time - that lamp, those hills, that certainty.

For almost 150 years, the Lilly Lane footbridge has carried people over the busy railway lines and over the Hebble Brook next to Halifax Station. These days it provides safe passage over a car park, but that doesn't detract from its importance nor for what can pass for beauty on a grey rainy day. My photo dates from the late 1960s, but you could get almost the same view today.

Those who are familiar with Skipton today will instantly recognise this scene from a vintage postcard. The streets were perhaps a little wider then, the shops a little neater, and I wouldn't advise anyone to stand in the middle of the road these days. The postcard was sent to my great uncle, Fowler Beanland, from an unknown cousin George, who lived in the town.

It's not easy to take bad photographs these days. The dullest of smartphones can deliver a perfectly exposed image with the click of a pretend shutter in the most challenging conditions. You do, however, miss out on those odd occasions when a bad photograph turns out good - this grainy, dull photo of Old Lane in Halifax is a good example.

Looking Up At Halifax

 

The first of a little Easter mini-series, "Looking Up At Halifax". This building on Silver Street is one of my favourite buildings in the town. It is sad and empty now, but I remember it in the 1950s and 60s as a thriving furniture store. If I won the lottery, I'd buy it tomorrow and stock it out with studio couches and G-Plan dining room sets.

Looking Up At Halifax 2 : To me, this will always be the Halifax Building Society Headquarters. I was leaving the town as the new Trinity Road HQ was arriving, and by the time I returned, everything had changed names. This was the building I got my pass book from and it was here I brought my savings box for emptying. Before the Building Society moved in, in 1921, it was a department store. Another grand building.

Looking Up At Halifax 3 : Any picture of Halifax's beautiful Borough Market risks opening the floodgates of nostalgia. Why can't it be full of lovely, quaint shops selling biscuits from large tin boxes? Why can't you get divi by quoting your Co-op number anymore? Forget all that for the moment; just look at the building and rejoice that it is still there.

Looking Up At Halifax 4 : Three buildings, three styles - let your eyes wander over this rich architectural tapas. On the left the former Halifax Post Office (solid and serious). In the centre, Post office Chambers and the west entrance to the former Arcade Royale (grandiose and rich). On the right, the white Marmo slabs of the arcade buildings (modern and fancy). Tasty.

Iron Mothers And 1905 Angles

 

There's enough scrap iron visible in this photo of mine from the late '60s or early '70s to keep a Scunthorpe blast furnace busy. It was taken looking down Blackledge, Halifax, towards Beacon Hill in the background. These days, the stone has been cleaned up, and there is half a forest lining the hillside. The cobbles, however, still make patterns in the street.

This lovely lady appears on the second of the ten Victorian photographs I bought whilst I was up in Whitley Bay. The only clue to her identity is a pencilled caption on the reverse of the photograph stating "Mother When Young". Try taking a photo like that on your smartphone!

This photograph dates back about 45 years to the time when we were living in Sheffield. In the Campo lane area of the city, there were some blocks of flats dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, and I would often wander the staircases and landings looking for angles and patterns.

This image of Doncaster's Corn Exchange is taken from a Vintage Postcard in my collection. The only thing written on the card is a single date - November 8th 1905. That was the day Alfred Buchi was granted a patent for his invention of a turbocharger, the day London was beset by a thick fog, and William R Hearst lost the race for Mayor of New York. And the day someone bought a postcard of Doncaster's Corn Exchange.

Nine Trees Walking The Hills

 

I used to call this feature "Twelve From ...", but what with tariffs and trade wars, it will have to be "Nine from ..." until further notice. This, therefore, is nine photographs from last week, or Nine From The Tyne.

As Saddleworth Road runs into the town of Elland, there is a strange outcrop of trees sprouting out of the tops of truncated mill chimneys. This phenomenon is unique to this area and biologists travel from around the world to witness it. My 1980s photo captures it at an early stage of development, but I am having difficulty tracking down which chimney this actually is.

This picture of my grandparents walking along some seaside pier was taken, as far as I know, in the summer of the year peace returned to Europe. My grandmother looks almost penguin-like in her stance, but she is clearly happy. Enoch, my grandfather, looks distracted and strangely divorced from the seaside merriment. Within three years, when I came onto the scene, he had already left it.

With the hills and valleys around these parts you can position yourself on top of a hill and make eyes at the next hill. The towers and chimneys, factories and offices, that populate the valleys fall into perspective, becoming support acts to the beauty of raw nature. 

North East, North Bridge, Portraits And Prospects

 

We've visited several art galleries during our short trip to the North East, but few have anything to compare to the triptych mosaic on open display in the entrance hall of Whitley Bay Metro Station. Entitled "Passing", it was created in 1983 by Ian Patience and a group of young people from a Youth Opportunities Programme. Brilliant.

Home again. Home to the hills and the mills, home to the stone and the sets. The scale of Newcastle was grand, but perhaps a little too grand. I like to see fields at the end of streets and moors on the distant horizon. It's good to be home.

Whilst in Whitley Bay, I found a rather good second-hand shop with a small selection of Victorian photographs for sale. The price negotiation was complicated by my profound deafness and the shop-owner's challenging regional accent, but a price was eventually arrived at. Here is the first of the ten photographs I bought. A pencilled caption on the back of the card states that it is Mrs Hall of Newsham.

Scanning some of my old negatives from fifty-plus years ago, I come across one I haven't featured before. You could run an entire pub quiz for folk of a certain age who grew up in the Halifax area on this image alone. It is pre-Burdock (as we say in these parts) but only just so: the ground is clearly being prepared for the flyover to come.

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!