Skipton Castle: Then & Now
This "Then & Now" isn't nearly as dramatic as the last one of 3rd & Hill Sts. in L.A., as this one is from a country which follows an almost diametrically-opposed approach to its architectural heritage as does ours.
I've written about England's Skipton Castle here before. It's a place I visited many times in my younger years; most recently in 1989. Anyway, a few years ago, quite unintentionally, I started collecting old postcards, and some of my favorite subjects are olden-times views of places I've actually been to. I've got about two dozen vintage postcards of Skipton Castle now.
When I got this postcard below, however, there was something about it that made it look particularly familiar. Then it dawned on me that its photograph was taken at essentially the exact same vantage point as the picture I took myself there in 1989! Interestingly, neither scan below has been cropped at all in their horizontal dimension. The only crop I did on my 1989 photo was to remove a little extra bit of sky in the vertical dimension. Other than that, the two photos are virtually indistinguishable from each other in perspective. Have a look...
Skipton Castle gatehouse, circa 1913:
Skipton Castle gatehouse, 15 September 1989:
Not much has changed, eh! The only real differences in 3/4 of a century are the vegetation and the removal of the two stone chimneys on the tops of the towers. What really fascinates me about these two images isn't only their similarity in perspective, though, it's that little tilting obelisk-shaped stone bollard at lower right. It's not only still there after 75+ years, it's still tilting at exactly the same angle! Moreover, in the 1989 photo you can see they've put up a post next to the little stanchion ostensibly to protect it.
And while at first glance it appears that the old gas street light has remained in place, too, close examination reveals that the posts are distinctly different. Here is a postcard view from c.1940 that shows a "new" gaslight has replaced the older one, and it's the timeworn remains of that replacement that you see in the 1989 photo. It's telling, though, that instead of simply removing the old light like we Yanks would have done, a point was made to replace the former one with something that had a degree of period authenticity...
Anyway, what of the little stone bollard today, almost two decades after my last visit? Looking around in Flickr, I found this image from 2006, and look, it's still there...
Photo by Matthew Reames on Flickr.
Isn't that funny? A feature like that would simply have been done away with long ago if it were in America. In England, though, they made a point of preserving even this seemingly trivial detail. Quite a substantial difference in attitude toward historic structures, I must say...
I've written about England's Skipton Castle here before. It's a place I visited many times in my younger years; most recently in 1989. Anyway, a few years ago, quite unintentionally, I started collecting old postcards, and some of my favorite subjects are olden-times views of places I've actually been to. I've got about two dozen vintage postcards of Skipton Castle now.
When I got this postcard below, however, there was something about it that made it look particularly familiar. Then it dawned on me that its photograph was taken at essentially the exact same vantage point as the picture I took myself there in 1989! Interestingly, neither scan below has been cropped at all in their horizontal dimension. The only crop I did on my 1989 photo was to remove a little extra bit of sky in the vertical dimension. Other than that, the two photos are virtually indistinguishable from each other in perspective. Have a look...
Skipton Castle gatehouse, circa 1913:
Skipton Castle gatehouse, 15 September 1989:
Not much has changed, eh! The only real differences in 3/4 of a century are the vegetation and the removal of the two stone chimneys on the tops of the towers. What really fascinates me about these two images isn't only their similarity in perspective, though, it's that little tilting obelisk-shaped stone bollard at lower right. It's not only still there after 75+ years, it's still tilting at exactly the same angle! Moreover, in the 1989 photo you can see they've put up a post next to the little stanchion ostensibly to protect it.
And while at first glance it appears that the old gas street light has remained in place, too, close examination reveals that the posts are distinctly different. Here is a postcard view from c.1940 that shows a "new" gaslight has replaced the older one, and it's the timeworn remains of that replacement that you see in the 1989 photo. It's telling, though, that instead of simply removing the old light like we Yanks would have done, a point was made to replace the former one with something that had a degree of period authenticity...
Anyway, what of the little stone bollard today, almost two decades after my last visit? Looking around in Flickr, I found this image from 2006, and look, it's still there...
Photo by Matthew Reames on Flickr.
Isn't that funny? A feature like that would simply have been done away with long ago if it were in America. In England, though, they made a point of preserving even this seemingly trivial detail. Quite a substantial difference in attitude toward historic structures, I must say...