Cottingley cottages

These days the village of Cottingley is part of the suburban sprawl between Shipley and Bingley but there has been a hamlet here for hundreds of years.  In 1753 a toll bar was established on the main Bradford to Keighley Road near here (where travellers had to pay to use the road).  In the 1860s the village consisted of 142 houses, five or six farms, a tannery and a mill.  My photo shows old houses on Main Street, originally the village centre - although now the centre of the village is located in the more modern estate around Littlelands.

Cottingley fairies

Cottingley, a village a mile or two west of Saltaire, was the setting for the infamous "Cottingley fairies" hoax.  In 1917, two young Cottingley girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, took photographs purporting to be of fairies.  These photographs were eventually published and 'authenticated' by - amongst others - the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The girls did not admit that they were faked pictures, of cardboard cutouts stuck on hatpins, until 1981.  It's a fascinating story (read more here) not least because it shows how readily people will believe what they want to believe.  The photographs, cameras and related memorabilia are now in the National Media Museum in Bradford.

The episode is commemorated in a sign at the entrance to Cottingley village - and that, in a way, is another story, as I have tried unsuccessfully to photograph the sign many times. From the front it does not show up against the trees behind it.  From the back (as here) it is cluttered against what is normally a busy road junction.  A snowy day a few weeks ago, with unusually quiet roads - plus a bit of tidying up in Photoshop - mean that this is more successful than my earlier attempts.  (All the snow has melted now.)