A Satellite Tour of Bingley

Mick West - 2004

This page has since been made a bit redundant with Google Maps, et al, and their more detailed satellite maps.

The above photo is of Bingley, in West Yorkshire, England.  It's the town where I grew up, and spend the first 18 years of my life.  99.9% of the time from 1967 from 1985, I spent within the area covered by this photograph.

The photo was taken on May 29th 1997, from some satellite 200 miles up in the sky. The original is very high resolution (3000x2400), and so it's quite large (2.5MB).  If you want to download it, click here, but it will probably take around 10-15 minutes if you are downloading over a modem, so go make a cup of tea.    

Since 1997 this view has change quite significantly with the Bingley Bypass, the new A650, which now runs through Bingley roughly between the railway and the canal, greatly reducing the traffic flow through Bingley's main street.

This map shows the area matching the photo. Each grid square is 500m, or 0.31 miles. So the whole area is just over one square mile. Not a large area to spend half your life in.

I've spent several hours poring over this photo, zooming in on various areas, and remembering the many places, and what I did in those places.  I found it fascinating to see the spatial relationship between the places, Like the position of Gilstead (in the mid right of the photo), to Bingley.  I had walked to Gilstead many times, but my memory of that is one dimensional, just remembering the roads and paths I took, with no conception of real direction.

So, what I'm going to do is focus on various parts of the photo, and describe the features therein, and the what they mean to me, and the West family in general.  As such this is probably not going to be too interesting to anyone who did not grow up round here.

I'm going to start with one on this page, but I don't want the page to get too slow to download, so other parts will be on separate pages, linked below. (When I get to them)

48 Norman Street, Bingley

The original photo is centered around our old family home, 48 Norman Street, Bingley.  Here's a close-up of ther area, with out house off to the left. It's a terraced house, one of many built for the mill and factory workers during the dark satanic days after the industrial revolution, when Bradford (and surrounding areas, like Bingley) was the wool processing capital of the world. 

On the left half here you can see long rows of houses.  One of the rows is missing, and has been replaced by a winding road with some grass and trees.  I remember that row being demolished.  48 Normal street is the third house from the top of the leftmost row.  There is a white car parked outside.

Due east of here is a square of trees we called "The Woods", where we (the West Children), spent many days playing, building dens, throwing rocks, climbing trees and general childish pursuits.

North of The Woods is the playing field.  There used to be various swings and things here, including a climbing frame shaped like a rocket. with a slide pole in the middle.  We would climb to the top and slide down.  It seem very high and dangerous at the time, and indeed probably was.  But it was probably no more than ten feet high.

To the West of the playing fields is an old school.  (looks like four building set in a square now) We used to play there too at weekend when it was closed.  We would climb up onto the roof sometimes, when we were a little older.  Or just play with a ball in the playground.

The road running diagonally from the top left of the photo is Belgrave road.  I remember when I was very young this road was not paved, and just consisted of rocks and dirt.  It did not really get much traffic, as it did not really go anywhere.  I remember the "rag and bone" man would come along with a horse and flat cart, and take away any junk you had for scrap.  He might have also sharpened knives, like a gypsy.

At the top end of Belgrave Road was a small local shop we called "The Top Shop", as it was higher up than the other shops down on Mornington Road (The general lay of the land here is a fairly steep slope down to the southwest).  We used to buy bread from the top shop, and occasionally sweets (candy). I remember buying things there using a "Sixpence", which was six old pennies, or 2.5p in new money.  Pre-decimalization coinage was legal tender for many years.

If you follow Belgrave road down to the south west end, it stops at some greenery.  There you can continue up "The Steps", to Crownest Road. Here we see St. Josephs Church of the Sacred Heart, the catholic church we attended, which I attended until I was around 14.  Attached to the church is St. Josephs Primary School, where I was educated for the first 7 years of my educatable life, from age 4 to 11 (ish). 

St Josephs used to be just in the church and surrounding buildings, but expanded over the road.  The large field in the bottom right of the photo has a bunch of flat roofed buildings at the top, that's the top four years of St. Josephs Primary School.

Here's another photo, taken more recently, from another angle:

(This is part of a larger 2MB photo, click here to download it)