Looking Back column with Alan Burnett

Looking back at Halifax over my lifetime there have been many changes.

Buildings have gone up and others have come down; roads have been built and railway lines removed - but perhaps the most striking change has been to the hill that has always provided a backdrop to this town of ours, Beacon Hill.

When I started taking photographs of Halifax back in the 1960s, Beacon Hill was a sombre and barren reminder of demolished streets of back-to-back houses, and bare hillsides choked of life by generations of industrial pollution.

Today the hillside is a vibrant green, the trees, shrubs and plants providing evidence of a town able to breathe again.

Even by the early 1980s, when this photograph was taken, the hill was still largely bare, although the beginnings of trees can be seen on the snowy slopes.

Three factors brought about this change. The first was controls on industrial pollution - by the 1960s there were strict regulations in place on what could be emitted by the factory chimneys that still crowded around the lower slopes of the hill.

The second was the sharp decline in the number of industrial premises: by the 1980s, Halifax, and its citizens, was making the somewhat painful transition from industrial workshop to service providers.

The third was a conscious effort by Halifax Council, and others, to replant the hillside with trees. An article in the Halifax Courier in October 1972 notes that the Parks Department are about to plant 15,000 plants and trees on the slopes of Beacon Hill in an attempt to “provide a verdant covering for its once scarred slopes”. Looking at Beacon Hill now, and comparing it with some of my photographs taken fifty years or more ago, you have to conclude that this attempt was successful.