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.
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