Up the Mersey, 1970.
A view of Runcorn Bridge taken from Widnes, on the Lancashire bank of the River Mersey. I have been trying to establish exactly where this was taken from a modern aerial view in Google Maps. I think we are looking down to the river along Oakland Street, with Irwell Street running across right-left on the brow of its shallow valley. If so, everything this side of the lamp-post and for a long way behind the camera has gone. That part of Oakland Street in the foreground has now been incorporated into a new road called Wright Crescent which sweeps around to the right just in front of the camera position. I would now be standing on the front lawns of some new houses which have been built at right angles to the old street, breaking its long, dramatic vista.
The photograph was taken on Monday 6th April 1970, a bright but cold and blustery day. Shortly after I had taken it and was about to walk back over the bridge to catch a train from Runcorn Station, I was challenged by a deputation of formidable-looking women, some wearing headscarves and "fleecy-lined" boots. My photographic activities had aroused suspicions and they seemed to think that I was intent upon stealing some of the neighbourhood's few cars. "Ee, ye're not from around here, are ya?" observed one, "Where're you from?"
"Bristol", I replied.
If I had said Venus I don't think it would have made any difference as they had plainly never heard of it.
The picture is scanned from its negative and is here properly seen for the first time. The bridge was completely invisible in the original print, being lost in a whited-out sky.
Up the Mersey, 1970.
A view of Runcorn Bridge taken from Widnes, on the Lancashire bank of the River Mersey. I have been trying to establish exactly where this was taken from a modern aerial view in Google Maps. I think we are looking down to the river along Oakland Street, with Irwell Street running across right-left on the brow of its shallow valley. If so, everything this side of the lamp-post and for a long way behind the camera has gone. That part of Oakland Street in the foreground has now been incorporated into a new road called Wright Crescent which sweeps around to the right just in front of the camera position. I would now be standing on the front lawns of some new houses which have been built at right angles to the old street, breaking its long, dramatic vista.
The photograph was taken on Monday 6th April 1970, a bright but cold and blustery day. Shortly after I had taken it and was about to walk back over the bridge to catch a train from Runcorn Station, I was challenged by a deputation of formidable-looking women, some wearing headscarves and "fleecy-lined" boots. My photographic activities had aroused suspicions and they seemed to think that I was intent upon stealing some of the neighbourhood's few cars. "Ee, ye're not from around here, are ya?" observed one, "Where're you from?"
"Bristol", I replied.
If I had said Venus I don't think it would have made any difference as they had plainly never heard of it.
The picture is scanned from its negative and is here properly seen for the first time. The bridge was completely invisible in the original print, being lost in a whited-out sky.