Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
Industry
Tag: Rotherham
Across the road from the scene of the incident
I went to the cinema to see Avatar:Fire and Ash today. The film was entertaining in the same wat the other two have been, although I could do without the bladder-straining three-hour-plus running time, and the 4k high-framerate visuals in the screening I attended at times made it look like a videogame cutscene.
The cinema I visited was The Arc in Rotherham. After the film ended I went for a short walk around the area to try and finish a partly used roll of film I had in my Olympus Trip. The light was lovely and I hopefully got some nice pictures (although it’s an expired roll of slide film, so we’ll have to wait and see…).
However, one thing I wasn’t expecting to see was an altercation between a rat and a crow!
I fully understand that there are rats lurking in busy town centres – us messy humans give them a ready supply of food and shelter – but it’s quite unusual to witness them on the pavement, especially on a bright afternoon. What is even more unusual is to see them in some sort of life-and-death struggle with a crow! As I approached the scene, I saw the rat being harrassed by the bird, which kept grabbing its tail in its beak and pulling it backwards towards the road. When a passerby approached the crow would hop or fly out of the vicinity until it felt safe to return and resume it’s actions.
The rat was alive, but was moving slowly with a limp, perhaps due to the crow’s attacks, or maybe some previous injury, and there was no place for it to flee apart from beneath a car parked on the pavement, but I’m pretty certain the crow would have gotten under there without trouble. I felt bad for the rat and wondered if I should attempt a rescue, but I had nothing to grab it with and didn’t fancy getting bitten and contracting some nasty disease, so I decided against it.
Crows are intelligent creatures and I had a distinct sense that it was attempting to pull the injured rat to the road where it would be run over and thus provide a tasty meal. Or maybe it thought the rat’s tail was a juicy worm?
It was a fascinating, yet horrible thing to witness.
The picture below is of Rotherham railway station which is across the road from where it all occurred.
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
Happy New Year!
A happy 2026 to you all!
I wasn’t sure what to post about for my first post of the year (and the beginning of my eighth year of consecutive daily posting!). I don’t have anything that really screams “new year”, so instead I’ll continue to post pictures from the roll of Ilford Type-517 that I shot while testing the Minolta X-300 that I got in the batch of faulty SLRs I bought from eBay last year.
The Minolta performed well, giving nicely exposed pictures, and there’s usually little to fault with a 50mm lens from this period when it was the defacto kit-lens from most manufacturers.
Today’s trio of pictures show Bailey House in Rotherham. It’s currently occupied by the local council, but once-upon-a-time it was home to Grattan, purveyor of mail-order catalogue shopping since 1912. The Rotherham location wasn’t the head office, I don’t believe – I think those were (are?) in Bradford. The building is unassuming in many ways, but the protruding modernist windows add a touch of sci-fi.
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
Dead thirsty
Hopefully not down to slow service!
I took our Christmas decorations down today – always a depressing activity, I find. Normally I would insist we keep them up until New Year’s Day has passed (although not usually until the traditional 12th Night), but compromised this year as my wife hates having them up once Christmas has passed. It doesn’t make me sad as much as it used to, but I would prefer to try and eke out that cosy Christmas feeling a bit longer.
Minolta X-300 & Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MD on Ilford Type-517. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 14.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 October 2025
The Chapel of Our Lady on Rotherham Bridge
The Chapel of Our Lady on Rotherham Bridge is one of only five surviving bridge chapels in the UK. It dates to 1483 and survived as a chapel for 64 years before being closed during The Act of Dissolution in 1547. In 1569 it became an almshouse until, just over 200 years later in 1779 it became a dwelling for the deputy constable, and a jail. 109 years after that it became a tobacconists / newsagents.
In 1901 a petition by Rotherham residents was raised to restore the building back to a place of worship. Sir Charles Stoddart purchased the tobacconist’s business twelve years later, subsequently closed the shop, and proposed to restore the building. However, Sir Charles passed away before the repairs could be completed. In his will, he left £500 to be invested, with the income intended to support the maintenance of services in the Chapel on the Bridge.
Following the end of World War One, the work was completed, and the chapel was re-consecrated in 1924. Services are still held there to this day.
Fujica STX-1 & X-Fujinon 50mm f/1.9 FM on Agfa APX 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 7 September 2025
The Bridge Inn
Built in the 1930s using stone from the original Bridge Inn (dating to the 1700s), this Rotherham town centre pub is now (like so many others) permanently closed.
It’s not a pub I’ve ever visited and I only photographed it as I was visiting the new cinema on the other side of the road, and the light was nice. Despite being built in the 1930s, the use of the older stone makes the building look much older.
The X-Fujinon 50mm lens is pretty sharp!
Fujica STX-1 & X-Fujinon 50mm f/1.9 FM on Agfa APX 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5mins @ 20°.
Taken on 7 September 2025
Two bridges
I took the following two pictures while walking to Woodhouse Washlands where I shot the photos that I’ve shared here during the past week.
The first bridge crosses the railway line that comes from Sheffield, via Darnall and Woodhouse, towards Chesterfield and onward destinations. A scrapyard sits just at the other side of the bridge, along with footpaths to Rotherham Road, Rother Valley Country Park, plus some other trails through the floodplain.
Just to the right of the the bridge is a somewhat pointless bike gate. That aint stopping anyone!
The second is of the railway bridge which carries the stretch of track running between Rotherham and Chersterfield across the River Rother (from which Rotherham takes its name, translating from the Old English Homestead on the Rother). This line joins the line crossed by the footbridge pictured above a little further south. It’s not obvious from the picture, but the river bank in the foreground was quite slick and muddy!
From here I followed the course of the river downstream through the section of floodplain that lies south of the Mosborough Bypass (which marks the southern edge of Woodhouse Washlands). Before the bypass, I had to cross Ochre Dyke and Rotherham Road. The dyke is spanned by a small bridge. Or it normally is…
On this day I found that the bridge had been removed and the foundations for a replacement were now in evidence. The water looked jumpable, but I thought it might be prudent to walk around. Unfortunately, following a lot of rainfall, the route was blocked by swampy, submerged grass, and I would have had to make a significant backtrack to get around. So I decided to risk the jump after all.
Despite not looking too bad, it was quite a hard landing on the far bank, resulting in a muddy knee, a hand prickled on a bramble, and a pain in the joint just above my knee that has flared up on occasion ever since. I’m no longer young, it seems…
Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+ (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Taken on 3 March 2024
Guest & Chrimes Ltd
This derelict building stands adjacent to the Rotherham United football stadium at the edge of Rotherham town centre. The building is the site of a former brassworks, Guest & Chrimes Ltd, which was established in 1843 by brothers Richard and Edward Chrimes and moved to this site in 1857. The company produced produced taps, sluice valves, hydrants and water meters and expanded rapidly after the invention of the ‘High Pressure Loose Valve Screw-Down Cock‘ (clearly the double entendre had not been invented yet :)) – the forerunner of the modern domestic tap – by Edward Chrimes. The foundry eventually closed in 1999.
There is historic film footage from 1901 showing workers leaving the factory. It’s alarming to see how many young boys are amongst the workforce (although cheering to see that they enjoyed larking about in front of a camera in exactly the same way that boys still do today).
The Grade II listed building is currently surrounded by high fencing, and parts of the structure shown in the last two photos was demolished following a fire in 2018. The entire building is under lease to the neighbouring football club and there are plans to redevelop the building.
This final image features some poignant graffiti that I only noticed when scanning the negative (you may need to click on the image to see the full size version in order to read it).
There is a forum post dating back to 2013 showing some urbex images of the building, including interiors, here.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 12 January 2020
Another bridge chapel
Back in April of this year, I posted about the bridge chapel in Wakefield that stands over the River Calder. I mentioned in that post that it was one of only five such structures in the country, the others being situated in Rotherham, Derby, Bradford-on-Avon, and St. Ives (Cambridgeshire). The picture in today’s post is of the Chapel of Our Lady of Rotherham Bridge, in Rotherham, which dates back to 1483. This bridge crosses the River Don.
It was raining heavily on the day I took the photograph (you can just about make out the diagonal streaks of the raindrops if you look at the image at larger sizes), but the door was ajar and a service looked to be just about to start. I did try and get a photo of the worshippers inside, but someone came and closed the door just as I took the shot and I instead captured a somewhat blurry image of a clergyman who looks a little bit like a ghost!
This one turned out nicer, and was the last shot on the roll. As I was thoroughly soaked by this time, I treat myself to a fresh cream scone to eat when I got home. 🙂
Pentax Espio 140m & Ilford HP5+.
Taken on 1 October 2019
Steel City Snapper photography 