Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Another colourised dip into the envelope of my negatives from 1964 and this one is a mystery. As I develop the other photographs I’ll get a better clue to the locations that I visited during that year. I still have a Letts’ Schoolboy’s Diary from that year which should give me some clues.
I took this photograph of Horbury St Peter’s Church in 1964. That’s Ingham’s upholstery workshop and hardware store on the left. The advertisement was for Royal hardboard. I’ve colourised this photograph and the yellow and blue are as I remember them (but possibly not as they actually were).
I was using an Ilford Sprite 127mm camera and developing my own film at the time. This proved to be such a disaster that it’s only now, sixty years later, that, using my scanner and Adobe Photoshop, I can salvage images from the scratched, uneven home-developing disaster.
Dipping into the envelope of negatives is like opening a time capsule. Some of the locations I’m having difficulty recognising.
Not this one though which is Horbury Town Hall, which still looks very much like this today.
Sycamores, bus passengers, limestone pavement and a glacial overflow channel at Newtondale, all drawn on a trip to Leeds (but two were from photographic murals in hospital waiting rooms, a change from drawing chairs for me).
Newtondale
Limestone pavement
Bus folk
The Calder Valley at Addingford, down Addingford Steps from Horbury, is looking at its best now with hawthorn and cow parsley in flower.
I was intrigued by the old building in Fearnside’s Yard (now renamed Fearnside’s Close) off Horbury High Street. There’s no trace that it was ever half-timbered but it looks very old to me. Those rows of through-stones make me wonder if it was originally faced with stone too.
I got a chance to re-photograph the boy’s entrance to the Wesleyan Day School on School Lane, opposite Fearnside’s Yard on the south side the High Street. When I photographed it for William Baines’ centenary in November there was a skip in front of the window (previously the door for the boys’ entrance).
A new route for the footpath was recently excavated alongside the mineral railway. The embankment’s shale, sandstone and occasional lumps of coal, has been exposed. This kind of debris was once a common sight on colliery spoil heaps and there was always the chance that you might spot a fossil plant such as the bark of a giant clubmoss or horsetail, a reminder of the lush forests that grew here – when this part of the Earth’s crust was close to the equator – 300 million years ago.
The Gaskell School, more about the Wesleyan Day School and William Baines
Happy birthday to Rombold’s Moor Rambler Roger.
Planting the runner beans yesterday I came across this bead – or perhaps I should call it a stud, as the cylindrical cavity in it doesn’t go right through. It’s exactly one centimetre across.
In close up you can see that it’s not cut with machine precision. That could be clay that’s filled the cavity but I’m leaving it in place for the moment in case it’s a part of the original artefact – some kind of cement, for instance?
As I explain in my book Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, Whitby Jet is fossil monkey puzzle wood from the Jurassic Period, used by the Victorians for making jewellery.
We’re meeting up with some friends, Jenny and Clive, on holiday at Whitby in July and Jenny, who has never visited is determined to find a piece of Whitby Jet on the beach. That could easily take up the entire holiday, so perhaps we better take this piece as a stand-by.
Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, available from my Willow Island Editions website
On my errands this morning I managed to find time for a quick walk around Newmillerdam lake, plus a break for coffee, cake and a sketch.
Happy birthday to Wordle genius and veggie chef par exellence (which might explain her inspired guesswork) Liz.
Sunday, 14 May, 2.30 pm: To me the River Idle, downstream from Retford at the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust Idle Valley reserve, looks pristine. Its clear with long tresses of water-weeds wafting in the current, although I haven’t spotted any fish darting around but its designation is that it has a ‘moderate’ ecological status, although it’s ‘good’ for invertebrates and fish get a rating of ‘high’.
From the edge of a car park near Retford, North Nottinghamshire, pebbles eroded out of the Bunter Sandstone, originally deposited in temporary lakes in desert landscape 225 million years ago. They’ve since been redeposited as alluvial sands and gravels.