Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
A distant cousin of mine who lived in Thirsk told me that when she was a young child her guinea pig died. In tears she took it, in its cage, to Alf White – a.k.a. James Herriot – the local vet.
“Can you do anything for him?”
It didn’t work out like it does in the TV series:
“No sorry, even I can’t help him!”
Grape Lane, Whitby, has no connection that I know to James Herriot but another James, later Captain Cook, was apprenticed there in 1746.
One last snapshot from our 16 July 1965 third form trip to Swaledale. Sorting through the old gang (‘gangue’ = waste) near Hurst, Swaledale are my two school friends Derek Stefaniw examining a chunk of mineral – perhaps fluorite or galena? – alongside cool dude Paul Copley.
Happy birthday to Dave, who recently found himself at the sharp end of a charge by the Covenanters. Admittedly they were armed only with traditional muskets and pikes but still a formidable fighting force if they’re hurtling towards you.
On our Ossett Grammar School school trip in the summer of 1965 we visited Richmond Castle. This is the same film as the Reeth photographs that I posted yesterday and, as you can see (left), the negatives are equally badly scratched, spotted and, in places, solarised.
I think that this works well for the Norman arch (above) but as a change from the daguerreotype effect that I went for yesterday, I decided the clean up the remaining images using the spot healing brush in Photoshop.
I soon realised that using the mouse on my iMac was impractical so, after boosting the contrast in the desktop version of Photoshop, I transferred the photographs to the iPad.
Touching up the images using an Apple Pencil in the iPad version of Photoshop makes it so much easier.
I air-dropped the image back to the desktop version to colourise it, using the Photoshop Neural Filters.
Remains of an old coal staith, a loading bay for barges, on the west side of Balk Lane bridge over the Calder and Hebble Navigation It served the former Hartley Bank Colliery, which closed in the late 1960s.
The curved parapet of the bridge was originally capped by gently curved coping stones to prevent the tow-ropes of horse-drawn barges getting snagged. At this bridge you could have turned around the barge – and filled it up at the coal staith – without disconnecting the tow-rope.
Further upstream to the west approaching Horbury Bridge the canal passes a cutting so on this stretch towed barges heading upstream and downstream must have had some way of passing each other.
From my 1964-65 negatives, this is one of the two coal staithes (loading bays) at Hartley Bank Colliery.
The original (left) was in such a poor state that I’ve coloured it to make it more readable.
The same scene today is more green and rural, so I’ve superimposed my original 50 mm 127 frame on a wide angle iPhone shot of the same view today, taken from the bridge at the bottom of the Balk.
Apologies to ‘Ghosts of Horbury’ on our Horbury and Sitlington History Group Facebook page. I now realise how difficult it is to match up the perspective!
One evening in 1964 or 65, we drove out to Holme Moss on the watershed of the Pennines, on the border of what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire with Cheshire.
Apart from some disappointing contact prints, I’ve never been able to look at these badly developed photographs so I’m surprised to see that the sign ‘UNFENCED ROAD BEWARE ANIMALS’ is just about readable.
That’s my sister on the West Riding sign.
On another evening outing my dad drove us all to Temple Newsam, Leeds. This time that isn’t me on the plinth.
Spotted at the Øl hygge café bar, High Street, Horbury, this morning: to celebrate his 300th birthday last month, John Carr makes a brief visit to his birthplace, the cottage at the left-hand end of this Grade II-listed former farm house, which dates from 1637.
After his extended stint as architect in residence at the Redbox Gallery, Queen Street, the John Carr roadshow was moving on to its next venue . . . at the other end of Horbury, in the Carnegie Free Library.
There were chapels at the north-east end of Kirkham Priory, separated by an ambulatory (an aisle) from the main altar on the far right on my photograph. This black and white 127 photograph, coloured in Photoshop, is from my one and only visit there in 1964.
Another colourised shot of Sandal Castle in 1964, this time looking from the motte towards the Presence Chamber and kitchen. In 1964 wooden palings were used to cordon off the area.