Take two...

They used to say 'the photograph never lies' but we know now that, even from photography's earliest days (the Cottingley Fairies hoax), what we see is not always the truth.  With programmes like Photoshop, even fairly unskilled amateurs can erase details, add in extras, change colours and effect all sorts of amendments to alter what was originally there in a scene.  I do it myself sometimes, cloning out a bit of litter or an intrusive telephone wire, but even when I don't alter a photo in processing, my pictures don't always tell the whole truth.  Yesterday's picture versus today's demonstrate that quite easily.

This wide-angle view again shows the old cottages at Jane Hills, which look so olde-worlde and charming in close-up.  The reality is that they are now dwarfed and hemmed in by surrounding commercial premises and have a building site on their front steps, where they are building a very modern orthodontics factory.  Disappointing, isn't it?  It's a sad fate for what once was an isolated, rural hamlet on the canal bank.

Jane Hills

I'm always learning something new as I look out for interesting subjects for this blog. I've passed these cottages daily for several years, as they're very close to where I work.  They are right on the canalside (I was standing on the towpath to take this photo) but I hadn't known until I visited the exhibition on the Kennet (see yesterday) that at one time some of these properties were lived in by boatmen who worked on the canal.  The working boats' trips were short enough that the boatmen didn't need to live permanently on board, so they and their families tended to live beside the canal, many of them in places like Burscough in Lancashire.

The three oldest cottages here date back to 1796 and were originally two homes with a textile workshop attached.  Wool would have been loaded in directly from the canalside through a door on the gable-end, now blocked up.  Other buildings were added in the mid-19th century.  Before Saltaire was built the buildings would have been quite isolated in a rural setting.  Salts Mill is about a quarter of a mile up the canal.

One of the cottages is currently for sale but the estate agent's details don't tell you how old and historic the property is (it is Grade II listed) ...  and nor does it mention some other important details about the site....

Rone Design

This is the attractive building in Saltaire that yesterday's lighted window came from.  The building, once a house (or two) and now an office, is situated at the junction of Victoria Road and Saltaire Road, opposite the Salts Hospital building.  It is beautifully cared for, kept very smart and the tiny garden is nicely designed too.  It gives a me a little lift of pleasure everytime I pass by - day or night.

I suppose if you are an architectural consultant and interior designer, then you would want your home-base to do justice to your brand. The company, Rone Design, has occupied these premises since 1989.  I don't honestly know much about them but they obviously work in partnership with architects and other professionals on new building projects and renovations, acting as project managers, quantity surveyors and consultants.  Read about them on their website.  It's vital that Saltaire continues to attract and keep businesses, as well as being a residential area.  An architectural consultancy seems to fit neatly within the ethos of Saltaire as a creative, arts-based community.

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Thanks to Stacy at 'Microcosm' for your kind words and link to my blog.  I think it's time listed a few more of my favourite blogs, so where better to start than 'Microcosm' -  'a blog that explores the beauty that can exist in restricted circumstances'.  Given that I tend to focus much of the time on a very small patch of the globe here in Saltaire, Stacy and I - for different reasons - share something in common, looking at the detail close round us rather than at the bigger picture.

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.

Heritage Trail 14 - Saltaire Road

'At the top of Albert Road, turn left and use the zebra crossing to cross Saltaire Road...' and be careful because that is often busy too, though early on a Sunday morning it is eerily quiet.  (Malyss, Jack and all the rest of you who think we drive on the wrong side of the road here, we will hang on to you at this point, in case you forget which way to look at the crossing!)

The houses opposite were some of the later houses to be built as part of Sir Titus Salt's masterplan for Saltaire, completed in 1868.  The streets are called Jane Street and Dove Street.  Jane and Dove were Sir Titus's daughters-in-law.  The building just creeping into the left of the picture is 1 Albert Road, the largest house in the village, now a bank and originally the home of Salt's Mill's chief cashier.

The alley on the right is at the back of a row of shops called Gordon Terrace that we will visit tomorrow.

[Streets named on street plan]

Heritage Trail 12 - Albert Road

'Continue along Caroline Street to the junction with Albert Road. Here turn left uphill....'  Albert Road forms the western boundary of Saltaire village and originally looked onto open countryside. Now it overlooks the newer Hirst Wood estate and Saltaire Primary School. At the northern (lower) end of Albert Road you pass a row of overlookers' cottages but at either end of the road - as shown in my photo - there are some grander terraces and semis, originally home to the company's executives, teachers and the church minister.  They still make very attractive, good-sized family homes - solid stone with slate roofs, and lovely high-ceilinged rooms.

[Photo taken near the Primary School marked on the street plan]

Heritage Trail 11 - Streets & alleys

'You will see the streets branch off at regular intervals...'  Walking along Caroline Street takes you past the end of many of the streets that run north-south, like George Street on the left here.  George Street is one of the longest streets in the village, cleverly designed so that the Church can be seen right from the very top (see here).  Between the streets run back alleys, where each house has its own backyard (and originally its own 'privy' or outside toilet) making these houses luxurious compared to the prevailing conditions in the cities in early Victorian times.  Remember, these were houses for ordinary working folk, Sir Titus Salt's millworkers, most of whom had previously been living in the city of Bradford where the mills then were.

I think it's hard for us these days to appreciate just how significant Salt's actions were.  James Smith in his report for the Health Of Towns Commission in 1844 concluded "... of Bradford I am obliged to pronounce it the most filthy town I visited."  Central Bradford in the 1840's is described as having "courts, yards and dingy alleys with overflowing privies, open cesspits, pig styes and slaughterhouses and effluent laden watercourses".  Diseases, including cholera, were rife.

The wonderful book by Jim Greenhalf, 'Salt & Silver' says: "For more than 25 years Salt had worked in the dirty heart of bursting-at-the seams Bradford... He was a very rich man, and might have retired with a lordly income... but he was proposing to adandon Bradford for a greenfield site more than three miles to the north. Everything was based in town. Yet Salt proposed removing to the country, putting himself at the astronomical expense of building a vast new works, fire-proof and with all modern conveniences." (Plus the village around it).  And why?..... "because he had a dream which he believed was his God-given duty to turn into reality. And so, on a chilly November evening in 1849, Salt walked into the comfortable fire-lit chambers of architects Lockwood and Mawson." And the rest, as they say, is history.

[See Caroline Street on the street plan]

Heritage Trail 10 - Caroline Street

'Turn right onto Caroline Street...'  Caroline Street, named after Sir Titus Salt's wife (1812-1893), is one of the long, wide streets pointing east-west through the village.  The village plan mostly follows a grid pattern, apart from where the main Saltaire Road, which predates the buildings, cuts through diagonally.  The grid pattern was chosen to use the land efficiently but the streets are carefully planned to ensure that each house receives ample daylight.  The whole village really is a masterpiece of design, with a symmetry and repetition that pulls the whole together and yet sufficient variety to avoid it looking uniform and dull.

Right at the far end of the road you can see modern semi-detached houses, part of the Hirst Wood estate, built much later than Saltaire itself.  When Saltaire was founded in the second half of the 19th century, this whole area was open countryside.  Sir Titus Salt deliberately bought up greenfield land to move his mill and his workers out from the city to a healthier environment.  Saltaire formed a recognisable and discrete village and the houses on the edge looked out over open countryside. But of course over the years it has become just part of the urban sprawl along the Aire river valley.

[Photo taken from the junction of George Street with Caroline Street, see the street plan]

Heritage Trail 9 - William Henry Street

'Then turn left into William Henry Street..'  The houses here, built in 1854, have small front gardens and are quite spacious inside.  They were intended for the 'overlookers' - the supervisors at the mill.  Personally, I think this street is one of the most attractive in the village, the houses having quite a pretty 'cottagey' look.   I love the rounded windows and doors, and the way the houses are uniform and yet have an individuality too.  You can see the difference between the ones that have had the stonework cleaned and those that have not.  As I have said before, the streets in Saltaire are mostly named after members of Sir Titus Salt's family.  William Henry (1831-1893) was his first son.

[William Henry Street is named on the street plan] 

If you're ready for a bit of colour after all these black and white images, I have recently posted some colour pictures of Saltaire in the snow on my other blog: Seeking the Quiet Eye.  Click this link or the image on the side bar on the right to track over there.

Hebden Bridge

This photo shows quite clearly how the town of Hebden Bridge had to use the steep valley sides to sustain its rapid expansion in the 1880s & 90s.  This resulted in one of the town's most distinctive features: the "top and bottom house", an architectural curiosity virtually unique to the town.  These are four-storey houses that are effectively two houses built one on top of another.  The front door on one side leads into the lower house, made up of the bottom two floors of the building.  On the other side and higher up the hill is another front door accessing a separate house that is made up of the top two floors and the attic of the building.  You can see terraces of these in the photo above.  I think they cause the local postmen and delivery men a bit of confusion.

Cottage

Sometimes it's fun, isn't it, to travel your own country but to try and see it with a visitor's eyes.  Just a small distance from home can become 'a foreign country'.  I lived on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border from birth until I went away to university aged 18, and it now seems both familiar and strange at the same time.  As I said a couple of days ago, the countryside is gentler and more lyrical than my part of Yorkshire. But the landscape is also scarred by years of deep coal mining and the spoil heaps that produced.  Away from the towns, in the villages and hamlets, there is evidence of the older agricultural way of life.

This cottage is in the tiny settlement of Ault Hucknall, which is supposedly the smallest village in England. (It's a village rather than a hamlet because it has a church.)  Nowadays there is nothing there but the church, a farm and this cottage, though at one time it was believed to be a considerably larger community and I'm not sure why it dwindled.  Anyway, I looked at this cottage with a traveller's eyes and decided it was just as photogenic, in its own way, as any I might see on my wider travels.

Hardwick Hall

 

(Best viewed large)

There are several stately homes within easy drive of my mother's home.  One of them, Hardwick Hall, can be seen perched on top of the hill above the lake here.  To the right is the Old Hall and just to its left, above the trees, you can see the towers of Hardwick Hall itself, one of the finest Elizabethan mansions in England.  It was built in the late 16th century, by Robert Smythson, for the powerful Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, the richest woman in England at the time apart from Queen Elizabeth I herself.  It has huge windows, a deliberate statement of wealth at a time when glass was a luxury, giving rise to the saying: "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall".  Now in the care of The National Trust, it's a fascinating place to visit  - but on this occasion we simply enjoyed a stroll round the lakes and revelled in the beautiful autumn colours and the sunshine. 

Windows

As I descended from Ilkley Moor back down into the town, I noticed the backs of these lovely old stone houses had a fascinating mixture of windows.   Given half a chance, I'd love to relocate to Ilkley - but property there commands a hefty price tag, especially these big Victorian and Edwardian properties on the edge of the Moor, which were built when the town was a popular spa.  At the end of this row is the house, now called Hillside, where Charles Darwin stayed in 1859, at the time of the publication of his book 'Origin of the Species'.

He wrote to his son William: "The House is at the foot of a rocky, turfy rather steep half-mountain. It would be nice with fine weather; but now looks dismal. There are nice excursions & fine walks for those that can walk. The Water Cure has done me much good; but I fell down on Sunday morning & sprained my ancle, & have not been able to walk since & this has greatly interfered with the treatment…".

Harewood House

It's time to catch up with some more of my excursions over the summer..... one trip I made was to Harewood House, a stately home situated just north of Leeds.  They call it 'a St Petersburg palace on a Yorkshire hill' and it does have some of that kind of grandeur.  Harewood is the home of the 7th Earl and Countess of Harewood.  The present Earl, George Lascelles, (b.1923) is the Queen's cousin.  The house was built in the mid-18th century by Edwin Lascelles, whose wealth came from sugar plantations and the slave trade, and it has been in the Lascelles family ever since.  Such a significant house has inevitably had a very interesting history.  The present Earl's mother was Princess Mary (1897-1965), great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and daughter of King George V, who married Lord Lascelles and lived here from 1930 until she died.

The house sits in a huge estate which is managed very effectively, marketed as an attractive destination for tourists and family days-out and as a venue for conferences, shows and receptions.  It has beautiful gardens and a long-established Bird Garden (a collection of exotic and threatened species of bird).

A shady seat

A shady seat in Alexandra Square, Saltaire.  This attractive little square is surrounded by Saltaire's 45 almshouses, built by Sir Titus Salt in 1868 to provide accommodation for the elderly and infirm.  It was originally enclosed by cast iron railings (on top of the little wall).  These were no doubt removed and melted down for munitions in WWII.  In providing these houses for the elderly poor, Salt was copying other local industrialists like Francis Crossley in Halifax, taking on a role which had previously been played by landed gentry.  He offered not only rent-free housing but also a small weekly pension to the residents, who were personally selected by him during his lifetime and then by a board of trustees.  The houses are still occupied, some in private ownership and some managed by a housing trust for Bradford Council and still providing homes for older people.

Sunset reflected

Another lovely sunset, this time reflected in the windows of one of the big semi-detached houses on Albert Road, Saltaire.  These houses were completed in 1868 and marked the final phase of the building of Sir Titus Salt's model village.  At that time, this road was the western boundary of the village and enjoyed an open outlook over the fields.  Since then a newer estate has been built opposite so they don't enjoy such lovely views, but it's still a good place to see the sun set.  For more Weekend Reflections, courtesy of James at Newtown Area Photo, click here.

(How annoying - Blogger has bullied me into using the new post editor and I can now only get the font size bigger or smaller than the old post editor made it.  I don't like either.  I liked it how it was before! Boo!)
PS Thanks to all those who have given me helpful hints in comments and emails on altering the font size.  I have experimented as suggested and changing the size in Design 'advanced' does of course change the font size.  But there is still a difference in size between posts composed using the old post editor (yesterday) and those composed using the new one (today's) even though both were composed with the font set to 12px.  I am getting used to the difference - it's only my personal preference, and a bit of a perfectionist streak!!

Wash out

Sadly, the weather for the final weekend of the Saltaire Festival was a bit of a wash-out. Chilly grey skies on Saturday and incessant drizzle on Sunday. Added to that, I managed to injure my back on Saturday morning. Don't ask me how... I just bent down to pick something up and - aaargh! I did have a hobble round in Saltaire for a while but neither I nor the light was in a good frame of mind for photography. So the finale went undocumented by me, though you can see a few photos on Paul's blog Leeds Daily Photo.

I did however manage to visit some of the exhibitions. The photo above shows part of a multi-media installation in one of the houses on Ada Street, "Ghosts of Ada Street" (by David Honeybone, Jonathan Lindh, Jean Sagheddu, Lynette Willoughby, Terry Wragg & Sue Wray) suggesting "the faint remains of lives lived and generations moved on". It was a thought-provoking comment on Sir Titus Salt's legacy - his benevolent provision for his workers within his 'model village' but also his expectation that the residents should be 'model villagers'. He tried to impose a great many regulations but, as in the case of the Wash-House spurned (see my post of 13 August 2009), some of these rules had limited success. There are echoes in the present constraints on residents imposed by Saltaire being a conservation area.

Des res

Just to give a bit more context for yesterday's post, the house interior belongs to a house of this type - one of the smaller dwellings in Saltaire, completed in the 1850s. They don't have a front garden, though they each have a small back yard. A living room and kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms plus a bathroom upstairs make them an ideal size for a couple or single person. There are lots for sale at the moment - for anything between £117,000 to £150,000, depending on the size, exact location and state of repair. Houses in Saltaire tend to be priced quite high for their size, as you pay for the privilege of living in a World Heritage Site. A major downside is the competition for parking spaces - Saltaire residents have to have a parking permit and space is limited, as you can see. But hey, who needs a car when the rail station is only two minutes walk away and there are loads of buses too? (Not me!)

Open house

Saltaire, the Victorian paternalist Sir Titus Salt's model village, built to house his mill workers in comfortable and healthy surroundings, is now a World Heritage Site. The houses, as well as the public buildings, are 'listed' and protected, though now in private ownership. One or two people have commented that they'd like to be able to see inside some of the houses. Well, generally speaking you can't. Saltaire is a regular community, not a museum, and the houses are still people's homes (so no, it's not a great idea to press your nose to the windows to peep in!).

The exception to this happens during the Saltaire Festival each year, when a number of private houses are opened up as gallery space for art works of various kinds. That gave me the opportunity to photograph this interior, one of the smaller 'workmens' cottages' in the western half of Saltaire, built in 1854. The photo is of the downstairs living room. To the left, out of shot, is a doorway to the kitchen (scullery) - about half the size of the main living area. There is also a staircase to the upper floor, which originally had two bedrooms but will now have a bathroom. (The houses were built with a 'privy' - a private outside lavatory - a vast improvement on the conditions the residents would have experienced in inner city Bradford).

The fireplace, though a Victorian design, is not original. There would have been a cooking range here. (See my post of 18 May 2010 for an idea of how the room might have looked in Victorian times.) You can see how light the room is - the village was designed with the optimum space between the rows of houses to maximise the light. They may be over 150 years old but they still make delightful homes. I wonder if the same will be said of the houses we are building today?
(Photograph used with the kind permission of the home owner - many thanks.)

Gable Cottage, Dent

I imagine this doorway looks lovely when the wisteria is in bloom and I presume that's why they have chosen a pale mauve for the paint. But even when the blossom has gone, I think it's a pretty frontage. The two-bedroomed cottage is on Dent's narrow Main Street, and overlooks the church at the back. It's handy for the Sun Inn too!

It is currently For Sale with a guide price of £195,000.00 - the estate agent's details have some pictures of the interior, if you want to peek inside! They seem to be marketing it as a holiday let - and that is one of the problems besetting the Yorkshire Dales villages, where property is priced out of the reach of young couples and families starting out. The villages are becoming 'ghost towns' out of season. Let's hope that never happens to Saltaire.