Promises

I find it hard to believe but it was exactly a year ago that I moved to my apartment. (Well, it was actually February 29th but, of course, there isn't one this year.) Looking back, it was a more significant step than perhaps it felt even at the time. It was a decision that took root a long time before it bore fruit. There was a lot of hard work, both before I moved (I must have 'decluttered' about 50% of my lifetime's accrued possessions!) and afterwards, when the flat required a major refurbishment. 

Was it the right thing to do? YES, without a doubt! I feel very contented, settled, safe and peaceful here. It's very convenient in so many ways - location and layout - and has led to me making new friends, as well as feeling very comfortable to invite all my old friends here. Of course, none of us know what the future holds but I feel that I have 'future-proofed' to the best of my ability. 

I'm very aware too that, as with all my house moves, I can trace what I view as God's firm holding and guidance from start to finish of the process, even though it seemed to take an interminable amount of time to achieve. (His timing is never the same as my impatience!) Considering I was so picky about what I wanted, I feel very fortunate to have secured a beautiful apartment in exactly the location I most favoured. You don't always get what you want - but in this case I really feel blessed that I did. After all the upheaval, I'm now settling back into a rhythm and finding time to enjoy my hobbies, my family and friends, and the riches of the lovely area in which I live. 

The year's anniversary seemed to warrant a celebration... so I've bought myself a new camera! I like and will continue to use my existing mirrorless Fuji XT2 but it's quite bulky and I've been finding it increasingly heavy. My intention is to continue to use that for those times when I go out specifically to take photographs. For the times (frequent) when I'm just out for a walk and might take photos, this new one is small and light enough to take along in my pocket or handbag, just in case. Yes, I did think about getting a new phone with a better camera but camera phones still have limitations so in the end this was the choice I made: a Panasonic Lumix LX100 II. It has a small, fixed, zoom lens and plenty of capability for the things I like to take photos of. Most of the controls are on the outside so you don't have to fiddle with accessing the menu to make changes. That's also a feature of my Fuji so it feels quite familiar. I've hardly familiarised myself with it yet. 

The photo of Saltaire's church (above) was one of the first images I made with it.  

Random finds

These were some random finds I espied on my recent walk. Various antiquities in gardens, a rather well-endowed lady in a tree and a weird woodland monster! 

 

Colour, even on a grey day

Even though I was settled on taking 'mono square' images on my walk, there are some scenes to which only colour will do justice. Thankfully my camera will capture a RAW image at the same time as a black and white one, so the colour is there in the file if I want it. 

A moss covered wall looks much better when you can see the vibrant green. 

An innovative barrier made of earth and bottles is more interesting when you can see the colour of the glass. (That's a variation of 'Ten Green Bottles Hanging on a Wall'!) 

The eclectic collection of figurines I spotted by someone's gate only really comes to life in colour. 

And who can beat the soft, natural tones of a small stream meandering through woodland in winter? 

So, don't worry, I won't be sticking indefinitely to a black and white palette, though I do find it provides a stimulating change from my usual style. 

A bit of a nature walk

More from my recent 'mono square' walk, this time a grid of nature based images... dead leaves caught in a fence; a patch of fern and ivy on a wall; early snowdrops; and some dead leaves still clinging to their tree, that phenomenon known as marcescence.

One of my daughter's favourite books when she was a child was 'Stanley Bagshaw and the 22 Ton Whale' by Bob Wilson.  It's about a young Yorkshire lad who had an adventure with a whale in the canal when he was out on a walk. It's all in rhythmic rhyme and has to be read aloud, in a strong Yorkshire accent, which was one of the reasons, I'm sure, that my daughter delighted in it. (I can do a creditable Yorkshire accent, even though I wasn't born and bred here!) Anyway, when young Stanley gets back home for his tea, his mother asks where he's been. 'Oh, I've just been for a bit of a nature walk, Mum' is his reply. I often say that to myself when I come back from a walk with my camera. Just a bit of a nature walk. 

Waymarks

I don't know if I'd be able to recreate the walk we took, on paths I've never travelled before. There were a few distinctive waymarks along the journey, but they were more useful photographically than as guides to remember the route we took. 

I love the sheer number of tracks and footpaths criss-crossing Calderdale. That alone tells you of the numbers of folk in the past two hundred years who have walked from home to the local mill to work, to school, to chapel on Sunday and to market to buy food. Some of the paths are hollowed out with wear and others paved with setts or slabs to provide a firmer footing. 

Public footpaths (rights of way) are marked on maps and signposted but lots of the well-trodden routes are 'permissive paths', routes that landowners allow people to use, often simply because they've been used for years. 

Like most of the Yorkshire Dales, Calderdale arguably has more dry stone walls than people! They snake their way improbably up hill and down dale, overgrown and furred with moss. Sometimes you can see huge gateposts, their gates long since gone but still bearing holes or metal pins denoting their purpose. 

At the farthest point of the circular walk, we climbed a steep hill to reach Wadsworth Obelisk, a war memorial commemorating those from the parish of Wadsworth who died in the two World Wars. That  stretch nearly killed me (!) but the view from there, looking down to Hebden Bridge, was lovely, even on such a dull and misty day.  

Flowing water

A grid of images of flowing water, taken on my recent walk. 

As I said earlier, I find that applying an artificial limitation on my photography - in this case taking only square, mono images - can sometimes help me to be a little more creative. I can set my camera up so that the backscreen and viewfinder show the image I'm taking as a mono square, so that helps me to frame my composition. The camera captures both a mono square jpg photo and also the normal colour RAW file, so that I can have both on my computer to do what I like with. 

I didn't have my tripod so these were hand-held at a slow shutter speed but they just about work, I think. 

Trees

More from the Hebden photo walk:

I do wonder what causes a tree to take a shape like the one above. I thought it both dramatic and  beautiful.

In winter, the skeletons of trees make interesting silhouettes. I always think I should be able to identify them from their shapes or their bark but I'm really not that good at working them out. 

Where trees group together in a copse, their strong, straight trunks as they reach for the light make an interesting subject. At least two of these are beeches, I think:

Another silhouette, rather less contorted than the previous one: 

Here's a tangle of roots, similar to those I found a few days ago (HERE). Their brightness contrasts starkly with the rich, dark soil and leaf litter around them. 

 

A walk by Hebden Water

I recently booked on a photo walk from Hebden Bridge. It was billed to be of about an hour's duration... but ended up being three hours of fairly strenuous walking. I was done in by the time we'd finished! (15K steps, including the walk to and from where I'd parked my car.) Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and it was interesting to be guided on paths I didn't know. It was a very dark, dull, almost misty day, though on the plus side, not too cold and not actually raining. 

Because of the weather, I set up my camera to take black and white images and because I wanted to be a bit more creative, I set up my camera with a square format. Oddly, having a limitation can, I find, provide a bit of creative freedom. Apologies to those who don't enjoy my mono pictures but you'll be seeing a few!

The mini-series in this post is all related to humans and housing. Although it was a relatively rural walk, in Calderdale you're never very far from people and the evidence of their histories.  

Brontë Parsonage Museum

This little area is perhaps not much changed since the time of the Brontës. The Parsonage has gained an extra wing (with the gable, on the right). Down the lane, on the right of my photo, is the old schoolroom that Patrick Brontë built for the children of Haworth. Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell all taught here at various times. In 1854, it was where Charlotte had her wedding reception when she married her father's curate, Rev'd Arthur Bell Nicholls. Sadly, she died just 9 months later during her first pregnancy. 

Patrick Brontë outlived his wife and all his children. He died in 1861. The family's possessions were given to friends or auctioned. Even before Patrick died, there was a huge amount of interest in the Brontës, thanks to the speculation over who had written the various novels, published under pseudonyms. One of Charlotte's friends, Elizabeth Gaskell, published her popular biography 'The Life of Charlotte Brontë' in 1857 and Haworth became a place of pilgrimage for devotees. 

In 1893, the Chief Librarian of Bradford founded The Brontë Society. They began gathering memorabilia, which was initially displayed in a small museum on Haworth's Main Street. In 1928, Sir James Roberts (who by then was the sole owner of Salts Mill), showing remarkable foresight and goodwill, bought the Parsonage and gifted it to The Brontë Society. It has been a museum, with an ever expanding collection, since then. It gets thousands of visitors each year, from as far away as Japan where, it seems, the Brontës are famous and revered. My own visit this time coincided with that of a group of very excited primary school children. As a result, I didn't take many photos inside! 

The dining room is where the siblings gathered to write in the evenings and to share their stories, walking around the table as they read. It was here in 1848 - so they say - that Emily died on the sofa, of TB, a few months after her brother Branwell had died of the same disease, exacerbated in his case by opium and alcohol addiction. Anne died the following year, also of TB, in Scarborough, where she had been taken to try a sea cure. 

Charlotte lived another six years, dying aged 38 shortly after her marriage and in the early stages of pregnancy. Her bedroom now holds various items belonging to her, including her writing desk and some clothes and bonnets. 

The Anne Stone

Haworth's Parsonage was, from 1820 to 1861, the home of Patrick Brontë and his family, including the famous literary sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Now a museum, it sits in a corner of the graveyard behind the church where Patrick was the minister. 

At the front, it looks out at the church and down to the village beyond. The stone in the wall says: ' This was the site of the gate leading to the church, used by the Brontë family and through which they were carried to their final resting place in the church.' 

At the rear, the Parsonage looks out over moors and fields with scattered hamlets, some of which may have been there in the Brontës' time. 

Between the Parsonage garden and the fields lies a wildflower meadow known as Parson's Field, now set aside for people to walk or sit and reflect on the view and the history of this place. 

To mark the bicentenary, four stones were placed in the Yorkshire landscape at sites of significance to the family (see HERE). Poems have been carved on them by fine art letter carver Pip Hall (whom I featured in my blog some time ago HERE).  

The Anne Stone sits in a corner of Parson's Field, rather oddly positioned facing the wall. Anne Brontë is the only sibling not buried in the family vault in the church, as she died aged 29 in Scarborough and is buried there. The stone is therefore a means to 'bring her home' to the place she grew up and where she wrote her two novels: Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the latter considered to be one of the first feminist novels. 

The poem inscribed was written by Jackie Kay, one of Scotland's National Poets or Makars. 

'These dark sober clothes
are my disguise. No, I was not preparing
for an early death, yours or mine.
You got me all wrong, all the time.
But sisters, I’ll have the last word,
write the last line. I am still at sea -
but if I can do some good in this world,
I will right the wrong. I am still young,
and the moor’s winds lift my light-dark hair.
I am still here when the sun goes up,
and here when the moon drops down.
I do not now stand alone.'

 

Haworth's back streets

It is interesting to wander round some of Haworth's side streets. The village was at one time an agricultural settlement, which then - like so many places round here - grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, as mills took over from domestic handloom weaving. The village has a hodge-podge mix of different ages of buildings, mostly 18th and 19th century. Some parts are quite characterful, like The Fold (above and below) with buildings arranged round a stone-setted square. 

I case anyone wants to be sentimental about the past, in the 19th century Haworth was said to have worse sanitary conditions than London's slums. Rev Patrick Brontë was so concerned that in 1850 he succeeded in getting an inspection by the Board of Health, after which it was agreed to install a proper sewerage system to replace the open sewers that ran through the streets. There were, it's said, just 69 toilets for a population of 2,500. There were frequent outbreaks of disease. Life expectancy was just 25 years and 41% of children died before the age of six! It was grim. 

Shirley Street is now a little private road. Some of the cottages are 18th century handloom weavers' cottages, like those below, characterised by their long rows of mullioned windows on the upper floor, designed to let in as much light as possible for the loom.  

Townend Farm (above) is one of the oldest properties in the area, originally a Tudor (late 1500s) yeoman clothier's house. It has been renovated as a residential property. On Changegate, a doorway is inscribed 1611. I'm assuming it is original to the house but you never quite know whether things have been rescued from older properties and integrated into newer ones. The door itself looks fairly new. 

Haworth Main Street

The village of Haworth is, of course, world famous as the home of the Brontë family. The centre retains a lot of charm, with its steep, cobbled Main Street still lined with shops, though many were originally built as textile workers' cottages in the 18th and 19th centuries. These days, rather than the greengrocer, butcher, baker, apothecary and stationery shop that the literary sisters would have known, it holds numerous cafés, gift shops, bookshops and galleries to cater for the masses of tourists that visit. 

On a sunny weekend in summer, the street would be thronged with visitors. On a sunny day in winter there were still plenty of folk about (more in the cafés!) but you could at least see the view and walk without threading your way through the crowds. 

So come with me on a walk down the street, from the square at the top (above - actually more of a triangle) where the Black Bull pub has a commanding site. (This was where Branwell Brontë drank himself silly.) The church is out of shot on the right, behind the railings. The building on the right edge, now a restaurant, was in the Brontës' time the main post office from where the sisters would mail their manuscripts to their publisher. It's said that Branwell used to take refuge here when he was drunk. His friend the postmaster used to let him use an upstairs back room which had a clear view to the Parsonage. Emily would light a candle in her window as a signal that her father had gone to bed and it was safe for Branwell to return home!  

What I most love is that wonderful glimpse of countryside beyond, with the fields and woodland catching the sunlight. 

The Georgian building with the steps, now a restaurant, was once the home of a clockmaker, John Barraclough (1773-1835) and, in Haworth's Parsonage, there is Barraclough clock that belonged to the Brontë family. Emily Brontë borrowed the name for a character named Mosley Barraclough in her novel 'Wuthering Heights'.