Looks like I was (thankfully) off with my assessment that storing attributes (json) from a driver in a local file being a no-go:
I have also been able iterate through this json file using another local html file with some ajax:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sburke781/hubitat/ImageCycle/ImageCycle/imageCycle.html
Still very much tailored to my BOM radar images, but still no reason it couldn't be tweaked to cater for other images.
Simon