DEVELOPMENTS in the city centre over recent years have led regular Remember When? contributor Vincent Finn to reflect on how our shopping streets used to look.

He has sent us some photographs of Broadway taken in the late 1990s, long before the changes that led to the 2015 opening of The Broadway shopping centre. Pictured is Charles Street, off Broadway, with Lloyds Bank at the bottom on Market Street. Who remembers the Stead and Simpson shoe shop, with all the handbags hanging up outside?

It's not so much what's in the photographs that interests Mr Finn - it's the process we went through to get such photos in a decade that doesn't seem that long ago, for those of who remember the Nineties, but was a world away from today's digital age."The only way to get your film developed was to take it to a shop like Jerome's, they had a shop in every major city in the country," says Mr Finn. "The Bradford shop was on Market Street in the building where the Wool Exchange is, next door to the Sphinx Lounge. In later years that shop had many lives, I think the last time I was on Market Street it was empty."

Note to Mr Finn: The old Sphinx Lounge, or Sphinx Bar as it was often known, is now Pizza Pieces on Market Street.

"A roll of film, eight exposures, was six pence, and a black and white postcard developed was three pence - these are prices just prior to the war," he continues. "There were other places to get film developed. Some chemists' shops did developing but sent it out to be done. One I remember was a chemist shop in Forster Square, Timothy White and Taylor."

Mr Finn sent his photographs in a brown paper bag from Bradford's old Lingard's store. On the bag, in green lettering, are the words Lingard's (Bradford) Ltd Established 1875. Telephone 24525 (Private Branch Exchange), Telegrams: 'Lingard's, Bradford.'

"Everything you bought there was either wrapped in a brown paper parcel, or small items were put into one of these bags," recalls Mr Finn. Among the items in his Lingard's bag is a supplement ration book, issued in July 1941. The name on the card is William R Herring of Walton Way, Mitcham. "Supplement Ration Books were issued to people who had to travel away from home, usually on war work," says Mr Finn. "Billy Herring had come to Bradford to do some work at Hepworth and Grandage in Wakefield Road.

"You had to register your regular ration book with a supplier for the entire year in the area where you lived. You registered with a certain butcher for your meat, and that was the only place you could shop, and for your groceries the same idea. We were registered at the Co-op. The only things that were free from registering were sweets, and some green groceries.

"Maybe your readers could share their memories of rationing stories."

Over to you...