Negatives' positive response

Digital technology has rescued fragments of a forgotten photographic past. The luminous quality and the sharpness of the pictures on these pages means they are too good to be consigned once more to the dustbin of history.

The images are on glass negatives which have no captions. The dates and locations are hazy and sometimes the only information is scribbled on the envelopes containing the negatives. As many of our readers have now told us very emphatically, this is sometimes wrong.

We had an enthusiastic response to our appeal for information, partly due to the impressive quality of the old photos which almost surpass state-of-the-art colour photography. Once the Yorkshire Post's archives would have been stuffed with glass negatives of this sort and that was the problem. They were heavy and took up space. Once lightweight film arrived, the heavy wooden boxes and single shot glass cassettes were dumped and in those days no-one could see any future value in them.

It's the revolution of digital technology which has made us look twice at them. When the Yorkshire Post moved offices in Leeds at the end of the 1960s, it was thought the glass negatives could be junked and no-one would notice the loss. In 1970, it was impossible to foresee that within 25 years images on cumbersome, heavy glass plates could be scanned and put on to wafer-thin CDs. We have retrieved a fraction of the glass negative stock. Below is some of the information which we now possess to clothe the bare pictorial skeleton and complete the picture.

Pictures 1, 2, 3

These photos are of Sir Malcolm Campbell with Bluebird K4 before conversion to jet-power – hence the exhausts visible. This dates the photos to just prior to the Second World War, immediately after which the boat was converted to jet propulsion. In August 1939, Sir Malcolm broke the record at Coniston Water and the presence of the BBC reporter would suggest that this is the event being covered. The background does appear to be the Lake District.

Picture 4

This was taken in early August 1947 in Ripon.The clergyman on the left of the Queen is the Archdeacon of Richmond, DMM Bartlett, with Canon Leatherdale believed to be the figure on the right. The Queen came down to Yorkshire by Royal train on the Thursday and spent Friday evening at Fountains Abbey. She was the guest for the weekend of Commander Clare and Lady Doris Vyner of Studley Royal. She attended a service at Ripon Cathedral on the Sunday and the following day marked a first for the Royal Family. The Queen broke with tradition and returned home by air, travelling in a Vickers Viking to Heathrow.

Picture 5

The photo is of Barlby Crescent and Barlby Road, near to what is now the A19 roundabout at the entrance to Barlby village. It's an area locally known as 3rd Estate – actually East View, West View and Barlby Crescent, approximately a mile from the Old Toll Bridge. The white-ended building was the garage of Michaels

of Selby.

Picture 6

Donald Mitchell-Hill writes. This is Ranks flour mill in Hull which was destroyed on May 7-11 in 1941. I recall seeing the raids, and grain from the mill pouring into the river. The roads were criss-crossed with hosepipes. I later helped survey the plot and build another mill.

Picture 7

Keith Thompson writes: The photo shows Stockbridge, near Keighley in 1947, I think it was March. I remember my father having to travel home because of the flood. It was caused by compensation water being let out of the reservoirs and into the river that was already well up. It wasn't a good decision.

Frank Greenway: This is not Barlby but Bradford Road, Stockbridge. The photo is looking towards Keighley from the River Aire Bridge. This site is to this day still prone to flooding. The stranded bus would have been on the local Riddlesden service. These buses were owned by Keighley West Yorks Bus Co, and were specially built to smaller dimensions in order to negotiate the canal swing bridge on Granby Lane, Riddlesden.

John Lee writes: The stranded bus was a Number 13, the 8.20am to Keighley. It was a Leyland Cub, still painted in West Yorkshire grey of wartime. I know because I was on it. I was 22 at the time and on my way to work. There was another bus which got through but ours didn't. There were a lot of schoolchildren aboard. We all got off and got wet through. There was no panic, we just paddled out. I knew the bus driver, who retired to Bingley and only died a few years ago.

Richard A Wilkinson writes: The Bridge Inn is on the right and the Bedford lorry parked on the right is outside the old Vincent Ferrand garage (Bedford & Vauxhall dealers) which is on the right opposite the girl wading. The River Aire is also on the right behind the garage

and pub.

Picture 8

Howard Sumner writes: I believe that the photograph would have been taken at Sowerby Bridge station and the person standing next to Lloyd George is my grandfather Robert Sumner. Robert was originally station master at Clifton Junction, where my father and his two brothers were born. He then came to Sowerby Bridge as station master, before ending his career as station master at the Exchange Station in Bradford. He did not come to Bradford until 1936.

Just after that, his middle son Robert (Bob) met and subsequently married my mother. His eldest son, Harold, married in Sowerby Bridge and worked his way up at Atkinson's blanket manufacturers, eventually becoming chairman and managing director.

All three of his sons passed away some time ago but my mother is still going strong (92), living at Thornton Dale and reading the Yorkshire Post every day, doing the crossword, and she immediately recognised her father-in-law. While he was at Sowerby Bridge, he was choirmaster at a Halifax church and when he came to Bradford, he became choirmaster at Great Horton Methodists.

At a memorial service last year for Marion, the wife of Harold, the eldest son, they showed pictures of his father and recounted how he always used to wear his silk top hat whenever anybody important came to the station. Printing your photograph was therefore an incredible coincidence.

Gordon Rhodes: I don't think it can be 1918 as your caption suggests. There's a blurred sign in the background which I believe says London Midland and Scottish railway, and this did not come into existence until 1923.

Picture 9

David Swallow writes: This shows prisoners-of-war working on the new Farfield council estate off Richmond Road in the Cote Lane area. I am 74 and have spoken to my 92-year-old cousin who has lived in the village all her life. She confirms my impression.

My wife, who has lived in the Otley area all her life, says the prisoners were kept on Weston Lane, Otley. Some did stay in the area and married local girls. My wife's uncle drove a tank out of Farnley where there was a big military presence on the Horton-Fawkes estate. There is still a mark on the building which at the top of Bridge Street which he caused by not taking the corner properly.

Richard Wilson: The picture of PoWs at Farsley taken on August 25, 1940. At the time of the picture, I was only nine months old but I do know of events relating to the PoW camp.

The "new" estate, as we called it at Farsley, was built by PoWs and in rough terms was bounded on the west by the Ring Road, Farsley (of course not built at that time), on the south by Richmond Road – west of Far Field Drive, on the east by Far Field Drive, on the north by Farsley Cricket Ground.

The farm in the picture was on the west side of Cote Lane, north of Richmond Road so I suggest that the picture was taken just to the west of the junction of Richmond Road and Farfield Drive. The farm supplied milk to local people and after the war one the PoWs worked for the farmer. The prisoner's name was Kurt (can't remember his surname) – a lovely fellow. He stayed in the area quite a while and had been trained to fly bombers and been shot down. He obtained a commercial flying licence in this country – probably at Yeadon Aerodrome. I was also told that the German air raid on Bradford was led by a former student at Bradford Tech who used the Leeds/Bradford train line as a guide. Part of the plan was to bomb the wool mills at Stanningley Bottom on the way back but he forgot about the railway tunnel and hence they followed the line round Pudsey and missed them all.

Derek Maguire writes: When I was five or six years old, I used to run among the PoWs in the morning as they were marched past the end of our street. They were billeted at Post Hill and they were marched through the centre of Pudsey and the centre of Stanningley to where they were working on the estate in the photo. There must have been about 120 of them.