Safely To The Other Side

 

Another way to cross the River Mersey is the method I’ll be using later today: travelling through the Mersey Tunnel. The Queensway Tunnel - the one I’ll be using - was constructed in 1934, the year before this fine old picture postcard was sent. Built at a cost of £8 million, it was the world’s longest road tunnel for the first fourteen years of its existence. A masterpiece of twentieth-century civil engineering, it will hopefully get me safely to the other side.

Ferry Across The Mersey

 

Later this weekend, I will be crossing the River Mersey. To celebrate, here is a photograph taken during a trip across the river more than seventy years ago. Later this year, I hope to make a slightly longer water crossing to be reunited with my brother. For now, we will have to be satisfied with this memory from all those years ago, captured during our “Ferry Across the Mersey.”

The Uses Of Zion

 

Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. I eventually narrowed it down to a building on Westfield Terrace in Sheffield, which has had a colourful history: it has served as a chapel, part of the old Royal Hospital, offices and, more recently, apartments. Fine buildings should have many uses; it is good to see them adapted over time.

Municipal Pride

The third element of my Dewsbury triptych is the rather beautiful Dewsbury Town Hall, built in 1886 by local architects Henry Hottom and George A. Fox. It dates from a time when municipal pride was competitive, and local towns tried to outdo one another in the scale and beauty of their public buildings. For a town of its size, Dewsbury would take a lot of outdoing!

Dewsbury Top And Bottom

 

The second of my Dewsbury triptych celebrates that moment - which all photographers know well - when you suddenly catch sight of an alignment of objects or an idiosyncratic collection of shapes, and snap away with enthusiastic abandon. Your companions look at you as though you’ve taken leave of whatever sense you had - but you have spotted a top market and some mannequin bottoms.

Stone Heroes

When brothers Robert and William Machell built their new mill in Dewsbury in 1874, they chose to incorporate four finely carved stone portraits into the fabric of the handsome Cloth Hall Mill. Two depicted themselves - upper right and lower left - while the others portrayed the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (upper left), and Richard Cobden, the former radical Liberal MP for the West Riding. I stopped to say hello to all four while walking around Dewsbury last week.

Rooftops And Chimneypots

 

I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. Add a decent collection of chimney pots to the scene, and you almost have a work of sculpture.

Reversing Requires Remark Methinks

Is there anything better than an old picture postcard - with a dramatic scene of waves breaking over the Blackpool seashore on one side and a cryptic message on the other The card appears to have been sent by my grandfather, Albert Beanland, to his brother, Fowler Beanland. The message reads, “Methinks remark requires reversing.” Make of that what you will.

Look, Duck And Vanish

 

At the outbreak of World War II, my father (on the left in the photograph), who was in a reserved occupation, joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). He always claimed that LDV stood for “look, duck and vanish”. The organisation later became the Home Guard, and he was tasked with defending Baildon Bridge, near Bradford, in case the Germans sailed up the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?

Half A World Away

 A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. I took the photograph more than half a century ago, and more than half a world away.

Heritage

 I've only ever worked in a mill as a holiday job while at university - really, I was just playing at it. But I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson of mill workers. Threads of yarn bind my genes together, and bobbins form the bones of my ancestry. I took this photograph at Bradford Industrial Museum. The machines stood still and silent, but history roared through the building.

Woodwork

I'm not quite sure how I acquired this photograph. I don't appear in it, and it isn't my school. None of that matters, however: the scene rings more bells than a school clock. I spent many an unhappy hour dowelling a dovetail joint (or whatever it was) and creating a footstool that eventually collapsed the first time anyone sat on it. Ah, woodwork!

The Collector

 

There is a pleasure in collecting old photographs of unknown people. They are people who long ago departed this world, leaving behind only a few fading family memories and the occasional faded photograph. We get to shine a light on these forgotten faces and imagine what might have been.

Tired And Grainy

I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality. I don’t care.

Swift Sorrow

 

“Sorry I could not see you this morning” was the brief message from FW to Mr S. Mellor of Leeds in July 1903. The choice of picture postcard is an interesting one: not only does it depict a fine Victorian building, but it also happens to be my old school. Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that a postcard sent in the morning could be delivered the very same day!

Questions, Answers

 

I have no idea who this group of women is or why so many of them are dressed in a similar style. You can speculate to your heart’s content and still probably come nowhere near a convincing answer. Even the most powerful AI systems available can only suggest that they are “likely to be members of a women’s society or club.” Yet that is the beauty of old photographs: they pose questions but rarely provide answers.

To The Saloon

Just one of the many decorative plaques found outside the truly magnificent Black Friar pub on Queen Victoria Street in London. The decorations inside are even more spectacular, making the pub an essential stop for any visitor to London. I first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and I still visit every time I am in the capital.

Georgie Girl

I saw this lady at the Ferens Gallery in Hull. I asked her permission to take the photograph and she voiced no objections. She is Georgie, the wife of the artist Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928). She is rather beautiful.

Land, Sea And Sky

 

Skegness, 1982: Out there somewhere lies the sea. Somewhere behind us is the land. Between the two stretches an endless series of sand-filled boundaries - land and sea, sea and sky - inhabited by that hardiest of annuals: the seaside holidaymaker.

Bus Stop At The End Of The World

This is another example of my somewhat imaginative use of captions to mask the fact that, after the best part of fifty years, I can’t remember exactly where I was when I took this photograph. No doubt it was somewhere in West Yorkshire, where I found a rather isolated bus stop - hence: “Bus stop at the end of the world.”

Market Times

I think I may have used this photograph of mine before for my daily calendar, but never mind - it is well worth a second outing. It shows Halifax Borough Market more than half a century ago. The clothing provides the main evidence for dating the image, while the sheer number of people reflects a time before supermarket home deliveries and Amazon Prime parcels.

Questions

Was Connie staying at the Midland Hotel in Bradford? What examination was she due to take on the 3rd of April? Did she pass? Questions, questions, questions. These days, it would be a WhatsApp message, with the answer on the next line. We would be left with no intriguing questions - and no delightful illustration of the Midland Hotel.

The Imperfections Of Age

The problem with modern AI-driven photo-restoration apps is their need for perfection. Faces become as fresh as regenerated daisies, and clothing appears dry-cleaner pressed. Old photos need blotches, smudges, and indistinct patches. They should show their age and wear their imperfections with pride. Just ask my great-uncle Wilson and his wife, Clara.

In Praise Of Chimneys

 

In these parts, we erect tall monuments to civic pride, elaborate steeples as testaments to divine redemption, and monolithic chimneys in praise of the God of Industry. Egypt may have the pyramids and Athens the Acropolis, but Halifax has the Corona Chimney at Dean Clough.

Job Done

 

As I continue to work my way through hundreds of old negatives - the legacy of a lifetime of photography - I valiantly try to categorise and organise the shots by attaching precise descriptions and accurate keywords. For this 1985 shot, the description is "Somewhere in East Anglia" and the keyword is "water". Job done.

Road As Art

 

I am of the opinion that you should never let a month go by without including at least one photograph of Burdock Way in Halifax. This majestic concrete structure, soaring over the Hebble Valley, provides an urban backdrop of endless dramatic lines and sultry curves. It is road as art.