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What are the strange structures in this photo?

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SquireBev

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Researching the old High Level line in Halifax, I found some aerial photos from the 30s, and noticed something odd about the houses which back on to the railway.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5MhNBRTd_ysQlhhX1pwOENnVm8/view?usp=drivesdk

There are tall poles with boards attached, seemingly corresponding with the house windows, but several feet from the wall. What on earth are they for?

The windows face east, so the boards could be some sort of sunshade, but they seem too small and too far from the windows to be effective.

Any ideas?
 
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Ash Bridge

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That's really interesting, just a guess really and probably a stupid one but judging by how small those window apertures are could they perhaps be mirrors or some sort of reflective material in an attempt to increase the light within those dwellings?
 
Cowley

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Ash Bridge said:
That's really interesting, just a guess really and probably a stupid one but judging by how small those window apertures are could they perhaps be mirrors or some sort of reflective material in an attempt to increase the light within those dwellings?
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It could be couldn’t it. The windows on that side of the houses look quite small.
Very interesting.
 
eastdyke

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Ash Bridge said:
That's really interesting, just a guess really and probably a stupid one but judging by how small those window apertures are could they perhaps be mirrors or some sort of reflective material in an attempt to increase the light within those dwellings?
Click to expand...
The laws of physics suggest that would not work!
@SquireBev
Do you know the name of the street?
 
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billh

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The land with the boards on looks to be a separate property from the houses and also has pigeon lofts on it. Something to do with stopping the birds flying into the closed (or open! ) windows or to keep them off the window cills?
 
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Is the building in the foreground houses? It could be some sort of elongated warehouse or workshop?
 
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AndrewE

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Building on SquireBev's comment, this map from the National Library of Scotland website
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=53.7199&lon=-1.8801&layers=6&b=1
seems to show that the railway is about to enter the north-facing terminus of St Paul's in the suburb of Gibraltar! There is a turntable at the other side of the running lines from the houses, so I wonder if something fixed, like an arc flood lamp or similar, had caused complaints so the railway erected screens. It's not protection against the sun, as that moves(!) but clearly the structures were erected by an organisation with access to big timbers (and the skilled labour to erect them) and which also had access to the land...
I agree with Cowley, it is noticeable how small the back windows are, compared to the front windows the other side of the road. Not all the windows benefit, but there are a mixture of single floor and two-floor screens too, mayby linked to who has complained: either not the employees who couldn't afford to offend the management, or on the other hand people on the railway who pulled strings to get protected!

p.s. looking at the map again, most of the streets in the area (including the south end of Vicarman St) have street names both sides of the houses so presumably they are real back-to-backs, not just houses with only back-yards and a back alley (which seems to be what people think it means now.)

pps seems like 78 houses on that relatively short road according to https://search.findmypast.co.uk/addresses?id=gbc/1901/street/b1a0b47cc5a73e699d4cda324619f361&_page=4
but I can't see the individual house returns.
From a census page on the web I found that one of my ancestors lived just east of Temple Meads in Bristol around 1900, he wasn't on the railway but all around him (including above and below) were drivers, guards, shunters etc.
 
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eastdyke

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SquireBev said:
It's Vickerman Street, Pellon. The street itself is still there but the houses have been demolished.
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Thanks! I used the information to check pictures on 'Britain from Above' but see that is where your picture seems to have been sourced! There are others on the site but all are similar and dated 1931.
I rather like the idea that they might have been protection from pigeons, having myself had windows hit (and broken) by the little rascals.
 
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randyrippley

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theres a hedge and a lane between the building and the semi-derelict field the structures are in: too far to shield the windows.
They look like quickly knocked up advertising hoardings, but the advert on the end building makes me wonder: are they test boards for exterior paint samples to see how they weather?
Having said that, the construction makes them look as if they were intended to be load bearing. Structures for winches for work in the lane maybe?
 
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theageofthetra

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I reckon that drivers or other railway staff lodged in some of those dwellings and as has been prevously suggested bright lights from something on the railway were preventing them getting a decent sleep- thats why only certain ones have them. They are substantial structures too and the railway would have teams who could erect telegraph poles which these could be made from.
 
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AndrewE

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randyrippley said:
theres a hedge and a lane between the building and the semi-derelict field the structures are in: too far to shield the windows.
They look like quickly knocked up advertising hoardings, but the advert on the end building makes me wonder: are they test boards for exterior paint samples to see how they weather?
Having said that, the construction makes them look as if they were intended to be load bearing. Structures for winches for work in the lane maybe?
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The gap between the houses and the wall/hedge is scarcely wide enough to be called a lane, and I'm sure they would have been to shield the windows.
What struck me was how closely the shadows and the screens fitted (some of) the windows. Each screen maps very closely onto a window just above and to its left in the picture. You can also see the shadows below and to the right of each window, showing that the sun (up behind the photographer's shoulder) is not the problem light source, but showing what the direction of the light source really is.
And the wind loading on a yard-square board at the height of those upper ones will exert a significant load on the posts, so I'm not surprised they are pretty heavily braced. Especially as a north-easterly is channelled along the flat side wall of that terrace.
 
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farleigh

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Would it not have been easier to use curtains?

I think they hold some information for the people inside the building to view
 
Cowley

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SquireBev said:
One of my first thoughts was actually along these lines. A very aggressive advertising campaign by a local biscuit manufacturer, or something.
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I like that idea. The first thing you see in the morning when you open the curtains is: “EAT GINGER NUTS!!!”
I’ve just asked my dad to take a look at the picture when he gets a minute. He was born in the 40s and may have come across something similar possibly.
 
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farleigh said:
Would it not have been easier to use curtains?

I think they hold some information for the people inside the building to view
Click to expand...
We forget a) how filthy everything was even in the 1950s, let alone a hundred years ago (so repeatedly washing curtains would not have been welcome,) also b) how poor most people were and how much more expensive "stuff" was relative to wages. Lots of ordinary working people probably couldn't even afford curtains.

SquireBev said:
Lyon's Cake Factory is just round the corner, so it's possible.
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My first thought was that it might have been light nuisance from a factory of some kind, but I don't think they cared in those days. Then the position of the railway turntable suggested a closer light source...
 
Cowley

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My dad just suggested that the houses could well have been substandard housing - going on the fact that they have tiny rear windows but also chimney pots and that they were demolished eventually.
I still quite like the reflecting light in idea apart from as said upthread they probably aren’t in the right place.
 
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AndrewE

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The small narrow windows facing the railway remind me of the windows on the houses on the east side of the WCML at the south end of Leighton Buzzard, and the flats on the west side somewhere near Kilburn.
The houses are 3 stories high though, you can just see the back doors over the wall.
 
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richardsun

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Interesting photo... I have a slightly strange theory...
These look like what I've heard locally called 'blind back' houses - originally built with windows / doors only on the street-facing side (which we can't see in the photo).
They usually had a plain wall at the back, because the wall formed the boundary with land owned by somebody else. It may even have been a legal requirement for the boundary wall to be plain.
Over the years a lot of these houses have had windows added, particularly as inside bathrooms were added. There are lots of examples around Halifax, you can usually tell because the number, size and position of the windows varies from one house to the next, which seems to be the case in the photo.
So - my theory is, several occupants of this row of houses have added new windows in the 'blind back' wall, but the owner of the land behind them is not happy about this, so has erected screens to block the view / light to the windows. It could be that the owners of the houses without the screens have come to an agreement with the owner of the land behind, probably involving an exchange of money...
 
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AndrewE

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That is interesting and something to remember for the future, however I'm not so sure, I thought the windows were remarkably uniform in size and distribution, apart from the middle third being the mirror-image.
Also the land behind is an operating railway who aren't going to care much about being viewed by the adjacent houses - and anyway the screens only serve some of the windows.
re the biscuit factory suggestion, in fact it is visible in the top centre of the picture beyond the other side of the road (if we are talking about the one that is also on the map.)
 
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richardsun

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I guess the windows will generally be in roughly similar places due to the matching room layouts inside the houses, although they don't seem to match completely along the row. I found an example of a similar row with randomly added windows... https://goo.gl/maps/FKCTkZ9hmbS2
We don't know that the railway owned the land behind the houses where the posts/screens stand. The scenario I'm imagining is more a petty neighborhood squabble where the owner of the land isn't particularly bothered about the land being overlooked, but is trying to make a point about the legality of the windows, and perhaps extort a few quid in the process! The houses without the screens perhaps paid the ransom.
 
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http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/halifax_st_pauls/ has a very good write-up of the branch line and it sounds as though the goods yard would have been busy, the whole of the photo is there too and there is a water tower that could have had the offending light on it.
The map I linked to shows SB (signal box) and SP (which I think is signal post) but surprisingly not the water tower. I was hoping to see my lighting column mapped, but no luck!
 
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AndrewE said:
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/halifax_st_pauls/ has a very good write-up of the branch line and it sounds as though the goods yard would have been busy, the whole of the photo is there too and there is a water tower that could have had the offending light on it.
The map I linked to shows SB (signal box) and SP (which I think is signal post) but surprisingly not the water tower. I was hoping to see my lighting column mapped, but no luck!
Click to expand...

The aerial photo at the bottom of the page is quite interesting. It's clearly recent, but before the houses were demolished - in fact they seem to be in the middle of demolition.

It looks like there are a couple of greenhouses on the land between the backs of the houses and the erstwhile railway, so perhaps they became allotments at some point?
 
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