IT is always good to come across an unexpected surprise.

These photographs showing the banks of the River Ouse in the days when it was very much a working riverfront turned up in the course of a random search of The Press archives. They were in a battered old brown envelope entitled 'York - River Ouse, historic pics': and that is precisely what they are.

There are decent captions to some of them, but not others. So if any readers have any further information about any of the photographs, or the things that can be seen in them, we'd love to hear from you.

This is what we do know:

1. Queen's Staith when it was a working quayside in the 1960s. Oughtred & Harrison was a Humber-based shipping company which presumably operated barges up the Ouse all the way to York

2. This photograph was taken looking across the River Ouse to where the Aviva building now is. The photo probably dates from the 1950s, and provides a wonderful glimpse of the western bank of the Ouse as it looked 70 years or so ago. The former railway headquarters building (now the Grand Central Hotel) can be seen in the top right corner of the photograph

3. The western banks of the Ouse, date unknown, but possibly taken shortly before photograph number 2

4. One of the earliest photographs ever taken of the banks of the River Ouse, this image, captured by William Pumphrey in 1852, shows the riverfront at Skeldergate taken looking across from St George's Field

5. Boatyard on the River Ouse, October 1854. The photograph was taken by Roger Fenton, who went on to become the first famous war photographer for his work covering the Crimean War. The man with the top hat is standing about where Lendal Bridge was to be opened nine years later. To get this photograph, Fenton must have been standing on a balcony under the waterworks tower

6. Swans on the Ouse. Date unknown. Do any readers know what the small, shed-like floating structure on the right of the photograph is?

Stephen Lewis