Colouring The Family Tree

These days, cars can drive themselves down motorways, computers can land aeroplanes, and algorithms can determine future accademic success.... and nifty little smartphone apps can add colour to your dead grandmothers' face. The technology is there, but should we use it just because it is available? I must confess, I can't decide: in some ways it is nice to see my grandmother Kate Beanland with a bit of colour in her cheeks, but maybe by adding colour we subtract history.

Greetings From Elland

 

When you go to Paris, you take a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, in New York it's the Statue of Liberty .... and when you visit Elland it has to be the Calder Valley from Hullen Edge. I must have taken this photograph in the late 1970s: the bypass looks as though it is still a fresh scar on the landscape. It's winter, it's wet, and the river was just as incapable of knowing its place, as it is these days. 

A Lazy S

 

Whenever I look at my old photographs of Halifax from the sixties and seventies, I am reminded of just how much it was a period of change for the town. Roads were being built whilst others were being demolished, chimneys were coming down whilst tower blocks were going up. And the trees were coming back: after being ground down by the soot of the industrial revolution for two centuries, they were beginning to repopulate the hills.

This third photograph taken from the top of Beacon Hill seems to sum all that change up. The road up to Southowram seems to snake like a lazy s: the old is being swept away by the new.

Where Houses Weren't And Mills Were

Here is the second of the photographs taken from the top of Beacon Hill, Halifax in the early 1970s. My camera has swung around, so now I am looking in the direction of The Shay and Savile Park. You can just make out the three graces - St Jude's Church, Crossley Heath and Wainhouse Tower - on the near horizon. Just as with the last of these photographs taken from my "1970s drone" you can focus in on particular areas and see how things have changed in the last half century or so. You can see where houses weren't and where mills and factories still were. You can see that the Building Society headquarters has made it through the historical cut, but Eureka hasn't. It is the kind of picture you could set an exam on, write a book about or compose a sonnet to.

Another Snowy Night In Sheffield

Another set of photographs from the early 1980s in Sheffield. Perhaps it was always snowing in winter in Sheffield forty years ago, but more likely these photographs were taken on the same night as the ones I featured a couple of weeks ago. The weather may have been bad, but it didn't stop people going out and about, getting their Christmas shopping done.

This was a world before on-line shopping, a world when familiar high-street names seemed as solid as the concrete boxes they inhabited. It was a world of crowded buses and glaring lightbulbs - a world long before LED's and lockdown distancing.

Back On Top Of Beacon Hill

Looking back at my old photographs, it would appear that I spent much of my youth stood on top of Beacon Hill, Halifax! If it were true, such behaviour can be partly justified by the fact that the top of Beacon Hill was the nearest we had to drones fifty years ago. From there, you could look down on the town in all its glory – and as a lover of Halifax, I would happily defend the choice of the word “glory” with anyone over a pint or two. Words can’t really do it justice, so instead just look at the mills and the towers, the bridges and the spires. Who needs Florence when Halifax is only a couple of miles from the M62?

A Trolleybus Through Time

I know a trolleybus is not a tram, but beggars can't be choosers in the world of old photographs. This week's Sepia Saturday challenge photo features an electric tramway in Wellington, New Zealand. The best I can come up with, in terms of a match, is this photograph of a trolleybus in Derby. 

The photograph is the work of the legendary Uncle Frank - collector of bus tickets, recorder of TV adverts, and avid caption writer on the back of photographs - and therefore we know that it was taken in Osmaston Road, Derby. It is dated 1941, which may provide some clues as to what Frank Fieldhouse was doing in Derby at the time. Osmaston Road is in the neighbourhood of the various Rolls Royce factories, which, during the war were heavily involved in aircraft production. Frank was a machine operator and was no doubt involved in one aspect or another of wartime production.

Electric tramways in Wellington, New Zealand seem an awful long way away, at the moment. It would take more than a tram or a trolley bus to get us there. But at least we can travel through time back to the streets of Derby 80 years ago - without any need of face coverings or social distancing.

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If It Wasn't For The Trees In-Between

This photograph must have been taken some time around 1972. Friends were visiting from "down south" and being shown Halifax - and where better to see it from than the top of Godley Bridge? Halifax was changing by then, new buildings were appearing on the skyline, and old mill chimneys were vanishing. My wife and I were passing the spot this photograph was taken from only yesterday, and I couldn't resist trying to recreate it, although only one member of the original cast was available for the reunion. The spot is the same, and the view wouldn't be all that dissimilar - if it wasn't for the trees in-between.

I Am Neither A Rock Nor An Island

The last two frames of the strip of negatives from the winter of 1964/65 reveal how I can be so sure of both the date and the place. They show the destination of my walk, which was to my brothers' new house in East Street, Lightcliffe. I may be neither a rock, nor an island (thank you Paul and Art for accompanying me in my walk), but at least at the end of my walk I can have the pleasure of watching Roger dig up rocks from his back yard.

I can remember the project well: he was clearing the yard to make room for the boat he was about to build there. By the Spring of 1965, the boat was well on the way to completion, and later that year it was starting its journey around the canals of northern Britain.

It was replaced by further boats, each of increasing size and complexity, and they would eventually take my brother and his family to the other side of the world. He will probably be reading this post from his island home in the West Indies: with memories of all those years ago .... and trying hard to remember what on earth snow is.

On A Freshly Fallen Silent Shroud Of Snow

I have a feeling that this photograph was taken from a little further along Syke Lane, just outside Priestley Green. It was, however, 56 years ago, and it was in the middle of winter, and there was a freshly fallen silent shrewd of snow, so maybe I am imagining things. Now, it is a different century, it is summer and the forecast is for sun and blue skies. Lucy-dog wants a walk, but where shall we go? Why not! Let’s see if I can find those fields and that fence, let’s see if I can remember that song.

I Am Alone, Gazing From My Window To The Streets Below

My walk of 1964 has taken me into the centre of the lovely hamlet of Priestley Green, and, as always, my eye is drawn to the cottages that are known as “The Sisters”. Nobody quite seems to know why they are thus called, although we do know that they were built in 1630 by Samuel Sunderland of nearby Coley Hall. I am alone on my walk of 56 years ago, and I probably imagined myself living in this delightful spot, gazing out of those windows onto the streets below. There is a well outside the gate of these cottages, whose waters were supposed to posses magical powers for all who drank them. The power to travel back through time by more than fifty years perhaps.