Torre Del Grimsby

Many famous public buildings in both Europe and America have been copies of the wonderful 14th century Torre del Mangia in Sienna, Italy, but one of the most surprising perhaps, is the Grimsby Dock Tower. The 19th century tower was built to accommodate the 30,000 gallons of water required to power the hydraulic machinery in the docks. The equipment has long gone, but the tower remains as a monument to style and beauty.

Soul, Grace And Majesty

Stand on any hillside surrounding Halifax, and you should be able to make out the town's three great spires: Square Church, the Town Hall, and All Soul's Church. Perhaps the most majestic of the three is Sir George Gilbert Scott's graceful All Soul's which stands on Haley Hill just north of the town centre. Scott designed many of the iconic buildings of the Victorian age, but still maintained that All Soul's was possibly his best church.

Capturing Etruria

Old strips of negatives can be wonderfully evocative because they provide context as well as individual images. This strip of 35mm monochrome images of mine dates back to the early 1970s when I was at university in Keele and would frequently escape the rigors of macroeconomic theory by wandering the byways of the neighbouring five towns that made up Stoke-on-Trent. On the day that I took these photographs I had obviously decided to explore the Trent and Mersey Canal as it passed through the wonderfully named Etruria. 

The area was named by Josiah Wedgewood when he built his new pottery works here in 1769 (it was named after the region of Etruria in Italy in an early example of somewhat fanciful marketing). By the early 1970s, the pottery works had been moved, and the old canal was caught in the doldrums between commercial and leisure traffic. It was a sight made for monochrome, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to capture it.

 

The First Tram In Space

This is a view of a road I knew so well. I used to walk down from school and then take a short cut from Clover Hill Road to Well Head and then the Bus Station for the bus home. There won't have been tram lines there in my school days, but somehow the memories all get jumbled up. My school days seem so long ago, and yet I can remember seeing a newspaper billboard outside the newsagents shop here (where the Swiss Cafe was, I think), announcing the first man in space. Or maybe, the first tram in space.

The reverse of the card is, as always, interesting in its own right. Written in December 1909, it is a thank you note for presents which will have been sent for Christmas. Addressed to "Captain Pacey", it starts, "Dear Sister"; so I strongly suspect we are dealing with a member of the Salvation Army. There was a Salvation Army Maternity Hospital in Hackney around the time of this postcard, so perhaps that is a clue. But there again, Captain Pacey may have been the pilot of the intergalactic spaceship that regularly left from the Swiss Cottage Cafe in Halifax for the dark side of the moon.