Alan Burnett

The street light poses a question - do we replace unsuitable old housing with unsuitable new housing? Can you throw light on the answer?

Lined up like some curtain-called cast of an operatic bah-ria, the sheep take a final bow before putting on their coats and making their way home. Home is the field opposite the bottom of our road. My task, tonight, is to count the sheep.

If you walk the cobbled streets of Halifax and other Yorkshire towns, you are surrounded by industrial gravestones, memorials to an age now gone, inscribed with the familiar names - the Crossleys, Akroyds, Shaws, and Crowthers. Beware of nostalgia - these were rarely happy…

I can never look at one of these group photographs of children from long, long ago without speculating about what became of them in the decades that were to come. What did life have in store for them: what successes and what failures; what challenges and what achievements? There…

The illustrations on old picture postcards from the turn of the twentieth century usually have a specific focus - a prominent building, or a bridge, a park or local beauty spot. The title of this postcard is, however, "A General View Of Brighouse". and that is exactly what you…

By chance, this photograph has reached the top of my "old photos to scan and index pile". A detailed examination reveals that I was a budding photographer well over 70 years ago (yes, that's me in the middle). It also reminds me that today is my brother's birthday (that's him on…

After a couple of weeks of themed calendar images, it's good to be back on the more familiar grounds of randomness. This means not knowing where I am going with each day's image, but for today - and this photo I took fifty years ago - I'm not sure where I was when I got there! I…

And so our week at the seaside comes to an end. It's time to brush the sand from between your toes, deflate your air beds, and pack your suitcase. As we leave, the sun sets beyond Cleethorpes Pier and the seagulls take to the skies in search of a fish supper.

Many old photographs seem to lose definition over time; detail is leached out of them until you are left with more of an impression than a record. Occasionally, however, you get one that defies time and creates a scene that is as fresh as a morning newspaper and as real as a…

I took this picture of Cleethorpes back in the 1980s. I've always had a bit of a love affair with the North Lincolnshire town; it's something about the way the land, the sea and the sky merge together. In any week celebrating the British seaside, Cleethorpes has to be included.

A photo of my Aunty Miriam and Uncle Frank (how can you go swimming in the sea while smoking a cigarette?) and some unknown child. There's a Georges Seurat feel about the scene, and it perfectly illustrates how random old photographs can become works of art in their own right.

Seaside holidays in my youth were spent at either Bridlington on the East Coast or New Brighton on the West. Bridlington was always my favourite: you could smell the fish and the candy floss and the chips. You could walk by the Sailors' Bethel, where they sang hymns to those in…

I seem to have ended up with another mini-series this week, and it is all about the seaside. Most northern industrial towns would have a traditional "Wakes Week" about this time of the year, when the mills and factories would close down and the workers would head for the seaside.…

My little mini-series featuring some of the buildings of Halifax, photographed during my walk last week, ends where it started with the offices of the Halifax Building Society. This isn't the nineteenth-century Victorian building featured on Monday, however, but the modern plate…

History is so often written into the very fabric of buildings, but it is also ingrained in the function of the building itself. This glorious building on Southgate, Halifax has, over the years, been home to the offices of a canal company, the William Morris Wallpaper Company and…

Many of the fine old buildings of Halifax you can look up and discover their history, their architectural merit, and their importance to the cultural landscape. of the town. Others you can just look up at and say: "My goodness, that's a fine old building!"

In 1898, the renaissance came to Halifax in the form of the new Police Station and Magistrates Court building on Harrison Road and Blackwall. When it ceased duty as an offenders' one-stop shop at the start of the current century, it was in search of a new function. Luckily it has…

I must have walked past Somerset House on Rawson Street, Halifax hundreds of times in my youth without ever knowing it was there. From the beginning of the twentieth century until the beginning of the twenty-first, this fine example of Georgian architecture (by John Carr of York)…

The second in my Buildings of Halifax series features Hope Hall, which now occupies a plot between Clare Road and Clare Street. This is a view of what now is the rear of the hall, but back in the eighteenth century, when it was built, it was part of an imposing front elevation.…

I managed a good walk around Halifax the other day, and I decided to focus on some of the lovely buildings we all walk by each day and never really notice. This week is therefore devoted to "The Buildings Of Halifax," and I start at the corner of Princess Street and Crossley…