Hancock & Lant – Steel City Snapper photography

Sandwiched between the River Don and Blonk Street is the I Quarter (formerly Hancock & Lant) Tower. I’m not sure where the I Quarter name comes from – maybe the developers? – but Hancock and Lant was a furniture store established in the 1930s that used to have its showroom in the same location. They moved address at some point to, I believe, Queen’s Road, but I’m not sure if they are still trading.

The access to the store was via a very narrow road that ran between the building and the river, with a small area where, if you were lucky, you could find a parking space. I say road, but that doesn’t really illustrate just how narrow it was for vehicles, and there was always the fear of getting trapped down there as there was no way that anything other than a bicycle would have been able to squeeze past any othe vehicle. Today’s photographs show this location, although it is no longer accessible from this end by motor vehicles due to the concrete support columns of the I Quarter building.

Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins 20° .

Taken on 6 March 2022

The photos here are of the Hancock & Lant tower. Where it stands there used to be a furniture retailer of the aforementioned name – we bought a bed, or a wardrobe, or something from there once. They moved locations years ago though. I remember visiting a few times, and one of the most memorable things about the location was that it was accessed via a narrow alley bordered on one side by the River Don, and the building itself on the other. Outside the store there was a tiny area for customer parking. Thankfully, the alley formed a one-way system allowing vehicles to exit at the opposite end to where they came in (where the columns are in the fist photo below), so avoiding any road (alley) blocks, or cars falling through the railings and into the river below.

These are both shots taken with the 23-year expired roll of Kodak Tmax 100 I shot recently.