Rescued Photographs

Over a long lifetime I have gathered (moss and rolling stone etc) odd items from aged relatives. Now I am an aged relative myself, I have looked out a couple of old photograph albums that came to me from relatives in Leeds and which have gathered dust and been unopened for maybe 40 years. There are no dates but the dress puts them pre-WW1 and probably late Victorian. I assume most of the people in the albums are relatives of the Lawrance or Nicholson families … for this and any future rescued images I will nominate them as the “Tyke Family” … Tykes being people from Yorkshire. Naturally they live in the small rural town of Utherdale somewhere between Leeds and Wharfedale, not too far from Ilkley.

So, as an interesting pastime and with a 24 hour snowstorm arriving this evening I thought I’d see what can be rescued using the very latest photo-editing software that I have on my computer (Affinity Photo 2). Here is my first attempt, with which I am quite pleased and encouraged to do more. I even managed to “colourise” the image, though that is a just a bit of AI jiggery-pokery really. Looks reasonably realistic however.

The photograph was taken according to the pencil marks in the album somewhere in the Meanwood area of Leeds and let’s say about 140 years ago. I infer that this is the Meanwood Beck which still exists as the map below indicates.

Quote: “The Meanwood Beck is a stream which flows southwards through Adel, Meanwood and Sheepscar into the River Aire in central Leeds. The Meanwood Valley Trail footpath follows the line of the beck for much of its course.”

The last photograph is one I found online of a section of the Meanwood Beck that must be close to where the old photo was taken – sadly the satellite photos show how built up the area is nowadays. Those fields the girls are looking at will be housing estates now.

Note: for non-Yorkshire people, a beck is a dialect word for a small stream