[Switch on audio to hear John's Talk]
"There is a story that a Halifax market-woman was riding her horse past the Gibbet as the axe fell and the severed head bounced across the platform and into her lap, where it seized her apron in its teeth and refused to let go....... "[from:]
Picture the scene........Stood sheltering from the heavy rain against the blackened walls of Halifax Minster last Sunday afternoon.
20 or so Souls taking part in one of the Calderdale Heritage Walks.
We listen to John Billingsley tell us the origins & meaning of the name "Halifax".
You can also read about Halifax's Grizzly History here Haunts of the Halifax Slasher A walk through hysteria and violence in a Pennine milltown
One of the cues/prompts for this week is to 'celebrate our ancestral homes ' Hence this audio of John's voice.
The photo here is of an unknown member of the Scottish branch of my family in Perth.(taken ,presumably outside his house?) .He looks like a hermit,non?
My Family tree has many branches of Half-members.
In the 1960s .I remember Me & my Mum visiting one relative, obscure & reclusive in Perth.
We knocked and we knocked but therelative I never saw didnt answer the door.....I think the house in the photo was where we waited & eventually (sadly) walked away........
Now.This photo is much older.(1920's?) But I feel a connection with my own memory and with the hermit of Hælɨ fæks.......... .
This is a sepia saturday post.