Category: Bradford

This former bank building on Hustlergate in Bradford has been used as a pub for the last thirty years and it has a good reputation judging from review sites. I thought their branding was a little muddled though, they refer to themselves as a Gastropub and don’t put their prices on their web-site. It was only because someone had uploaded a photo of the menu to Google Reviews that I could see that the prices were very competitive, not far off Wetherspoons prices.

The lighting didn’t make for very good photos, but the decor here was really nicely done. The furniture was of decent quality, the menus were clean, the bar was well presented and it felt an inviting place. Apparently they’ve just completed a major renovation of the site as parts of it had become quite tired.

The service at the bar was polite and immediate, even though I deliberately stood at a different part of the bar to where they probably wanted me. I’d add that wasn’t me being awkward (or no more than normal), simply that I had my backpack left on a table and I didn’t want to abandon it and risk not seeing it ever again.

For the first time that I can remember in a long time, I had to check what the Cherry was from Coach House Brewing, it wasn’t entirely clear to me whether it was a beer or a cider. Or not clear to me anyway. As an aside, I consider it to be a service fault when a staff member hands over a beer which hasn’t at all settled and leaves it, as it might need topping up, although in this case it did work out fine. I was expecting something very unexciting, but it was a surprisingly good fruit beer, quite a rich taste of cherry.

The basic burger meal, which was again better than I had expected. The chips had a slightly over-crispy exterior, but the interior was suitably fluffy. The burger patty had a taste that was actually quite palatable and delicious, juicy with a meaty flavour, which is handy as it’s meat. All very satisfactory and sauces were brought to the table for me and I didn’t have to go hunting.

The pub wasn’t that busy, but I liked this place with the friendly staff, clean environment and good value food. I’m not convinced by the attempt to claim this as a gastropub, I have a slight suspicion that they’ll put more people off than they’ll get in with that branding.

This will mostly be a post of photos from my little visit to Undercliffe Cemetery in the blazing heat of Bradford earlier on in the week.

Bradford’s population increased nearly tenfold during the first half of the nineteenth century, which put an intolerable burden on grave space on the parish church of St. Peter’s, which is now Bradford Cathedral. 426 people died in the cholera epidemic of 1849 and despite the church’s best efforts, there were bones sticking out of the ground. This clearly wasn’t an ideal situation.

The local authorities opened Scholemoor cemetery and this private cemetery was opened at Undercliffe in 1854. And by private cemetery, that means more expensive, so what we have here now are mostly a series of individual tombs and memorials which combine to be a Victorian temple of wealth. There were extra charges to be buried near the centre, in decadent plots, and much cheaper fees to be shoved at the outside or placed in communal company graves. Who says you can’t take wealth and influence with you after death?

The expensive bit is evident still today and there are six listed memorials because of their heritage. Many were owned by mill owners and their families and they’re mostly in good condition, although one is in need of some repair and renovation. The tall 30 foot obelisk tomb belongs to Joseph Smith, one of the least subtle memorials in the cemetery. There’s also a Quaker section to the cemetery as well (which was run in a more equitable manner), with their standard laying down of gravestones.

The company running the cemetery collapsed in the 1970s and for a few years the site was owned by a property developer. However, in 1984, the council purchased the cemetery and a charity has been working hard since then to improve the location. It was evidently very well cared for when I visited, with gardeners cutting grass and tidying up memorials, all very nicely done. Some of the memorials are damaged and most are heavily stained from the years of industrial pollution, but there’s an ongoing effort to repair those stones.

As an aside, I’ve never really watched Peaky Blinders, but this cemetery has been used in the filming for that, as have some other locations I visited this week (more on them later….).

This is Cartwright Hall in Bradford and it was constructed thanks to a generous donation of land and money from Samuel Lister. The council knocked down Lister’s former manor house (this seemed to have been planned, and not a surprise, mainly because it was all a bit rickety and was being used as a restaurant) and built this new gallery, named after the inventor Edmund Cartwright. It opened in 1904 and financed the purchase of numerous artworks with proceeds obtained from the Bradford Exhibition.

As an aside, the day I visited it was far too hot (well, other than when it poured with rain for two hours) so I got a daily bus ticket, meaning this gallery was about six or so minutes away from the city centre. To walk it would have taken thirty minutes or so, which I didn’t fancy doing in the extreme heat of Bradford.

The grand interiors and there has been a recent acquisitions policy of collecting more Asian works. For anyone interested, the original catalogue of the gallery is available at https://archive.org/details/illustratedcatal00brad.

There are two floors to the galleries, this photo was taken from the first floor looking back down onto the ground floor. The gallery was kept open during the Second World War and there are numerous newspaper articles noting the positive benefit that displaying the artworks had on the community.

You know you’ve achieved something in life if you get a room of this size with your statue located in the middle. I also liked how the security guard at the site was trying to balance ensuring that visitors (I was the only person in the gallery) could look at the artworks undisturbed whilst also floating around enough to check that I wasn’t pinching anything.

There’s also a David Hockney exhibition, as he was born in the city and studied at the Bradford School of Art. He’s not an artist I’m much interested in, but it was a carefully put together exhibition.

There’s a much more complete history of the gallery at http://www.bradfordhistorical.org.uk/cartwright.html, of which I thought this paragraph is a reminder that construction projects never really go well.

“The foundation stone was laid by Lord Masham on 24 May 1900, but this occasion was the beginning of a four-year struggle against the elements, workmen’s strikes and other delays. In the following July a storm brought the most violent rainfall ever recorded in Bradford. This flooded the foundations, causing the sides to cave in and leaving a deposit of silt over everything. It was then discovered that the subsoil was unsuitable for a building such as Cartwright Hall ‘of utmost solidity and massive strength’, so the foundations were dug twenty feet deeper, at an extra cost of £1,500.8 The greatest setbacks however, were caused by strikes, as a result of which work stopped for nearly a year. The joiners were out for sixteen months, the masons for ten, and when the plasterers, who seemed to be reluctant to do any work at all, returned, the building had been almost completed by non-union labour.”

The collections aren’t that substantial in size, but they’re still notable and there are works by LS Lowry, Andy Warhol and Damien Hurst. This museum very much comes from the legacy of the wealthy Victorian Bradford, it’s hard to see something like this being funded today. Bradford should perhaps be proud that it continues to invest and finance this museum, which some cities certainly don’t.

This was the view from my hotel window this evening about fifteen minutes before I had a reservation at an Indian restaurant, the International. I randomly picked it as it’s the best rated restaurant in Bradford on TripAdvisor and one of the highest on Google Reviews. The photo doesn’t really show that the rain was cascading and the roads were flooding, not to mention that the thunder and lightning. Oh, and it’s a fifteen minute walk to the restaurant. Part of me thought it’d be easier to go to Nando’s which is under the hotel, but I had made a reservation and I wanted to see if the restaurant lived up to the hype. And Nando’s isn’t really quite as exciting.

I took this photo after leaving the restaurant, as it was raining so hard on arrival that my phone screen had stopped working. I was very wet, despite the first use of my waterproof coat in weeks. I dread to think what the waiter thought when I squelched in, although he seemed too professional to comment, although he likely really didn’t much care since at least it wasn’t a carpet I was making damp.

Safely in the restaurant, I was pleased that I had booked as it started to fill up quickly mid-way through my meal. I ordered a couple pf poppadoms and dip things, whatever they’re called. It’s rather handy to get all of those to myself and not have to share them with anyone. I probably should have brought a jug of that mango lassi, it was excellent. The restaurant isn’t licensed, so there weren’t any beers, but the mango lassi was more than suitable instead.

And I went for the chicken and ginger karahi, which is a curry that I don’t see much on Indian (or Pakistani) restaurant menus. And some pilau rice and peshwari naan bread to go with it. I took the photo using a wide angle and so the portion size looks smaller than it actually was. I struggled to finish, and I didn’t make it through all of the rice. The curry was excellent, served as a large portion and with lots of smaller pieces of chicken. There were slithers of gingers and a depth of taste with a range of flavours of which many I couldn’t identify. But I didn’t need to, I’m not Jay Rayner, I just needed to know that it tasted really rather lovely.

The service was polite and attentive throughout, although not overly engaging. But, I didn’t really want engaging here, I was still wet and was quite content to continue reading my Paul Theroux book on my phone. Whilst listening to what the other diners were talking about of course. The bill was correct and presented promptly and although they have a fast turnover of tables, this was another location that never rushed me at any stage. And I got a chocolate with the bill, which is essential I believe in any restaurant.

The restaurant feels a little upmarket, the result of a large restoration that they had last year, seemingly a long overdue one looking at the previous reviews. The prices were moderate and what I’d expect to pay in a decent restaurant such as this, so all very competitive. I feel that I might need to try a few more Indian restaurants in Bradford to properly be able to compare them, but if they’re as good as this one, then I will be very pleased.

It took me a little while to work out how to take this photo without taking a photo of myself as a reflection at the same time. Anyway, this museum is free of charge to enter and is part of the National Science Museum. I was the first one into the museum today, although that is primarily as I always seem to arrive everywhere early for no apparent reason. The staff member at the entrance was helpful, scanning my ticket as although they’re free they still have to be pre-booked. The staff also appear to have been trained (as I note it is mentioned in other reviews) to leave a donation on entrance, but I can imagine times are challenging and that approach probably tempts some people who might not otherwise leave anything.

The lower floor permanent collection is quite substantial and is a history primarily of photography and videography.

The first section explains how photography looked in the Victorian period.

I’m pleased that I don’t have to sit like this for a photo. Not that I have many photos taken of me.

Photography at the beach and the evolution of the huge Kodak company, who have given a substantial archive of stuff to the museum. I’ve taken a fair few photos of some interesting individuals exhibits, which I may one day getting round to writing about for my four blog readers.

There’s some of their stuff, a heap of cameras. There were no shortage of cameras on display on this level, but largesse wasn’t repeated on the upper floors where there were very few actual exhibits.

The interactive Wonderlab exhibition, more designed for children.

You could shout down this and see how it echoed or something. I decided against that.

A mirror maze. There was no way that I was going to do that, I’d just walk into a mirror and you can absolutely guarantee that at that moment six people would see me.

This is a fake Dalek (or whatever they’re called) from Doctor Who.

Play School. I’m obviously too young to remember this. I actually assumed when visiting that these were copies of the originals, but they’re actually the real ones that were left after the series came to an end. I would have stared at them for longer if I had realised….

Gordon the Gopher, once in the broom cupboard with Phillip Schofield, and I do remember that. This doesn’t appear to be original as it’s not listed on the on-line collections of the Science Museum.

Zippy and George from Rainbow. I also have no idea whether these are copies, the museum hasn’t put them on their on-line catalogue and some people think they’re real and some say that they’re fake. The museum doesn’t help here, they posted a series of images of their puppets on Twitter and noted some things were real, but didn’t add that for these.

I’ve alerted my friend Liam that I will be taking his children here on a trip and he seems very agreeable to that   🙂

Some of this museum was really very good such as the permanent collection on photography, but there’s a huge amount of wasted space here and some questionable uses of that space. They appear to have a museum that’s far too big for what they need and I’m slightly puzzled why they don’t take some more items out of storage. The story of photography exhibition ended with digital cameras from twenty years ago, that perhaps needs something of an update as well.

I also don’t really understand (despite reading the reasoning carefully) why they changed their name from the National Media Museum, which seems an excellent description of the place, to the National Science and Media Museum, as there’s a very limited amount of science here other than in bits of the Wonderlab exhibit. I’m not quite sure what they’re trying to be and personally I thought some of it was just a bit of a mess. It did feel a bit like they’ve left all the good science stuff at the National Science Museum, which is pretty spectacular, and sent some of the junk up to Bradford. The television exhibition had very few exhibits at all (other than their puppets collection), none of a science or engineering nature and so I assume they weren’t allowed anything nice from the main collections in London.

The museum scrapped a lot of their film work and festivals a few years ago, and for some reason got rid of the Royal Photographic Society’s huge 270,000 photography collection down to the Victoria & Albert Museum. I can imagine the V&A’s delight at this, with the National Media Museum new head, Jo Quinton-Tulloch, saying:

“Our new mission will concentrate on inspiring future generations of scientists and engineers in the fields of light and sound, as well as demonstrating the cultural impact of these subjects.”

Anyway, it’s free, so I can’t complain (well, I clearly now have in writing this, but I can’t always be positive about everything) and I’m glad I visited for the morning. Friendly staff, a Covid-safe environment and some interesting displays. There were also nearly no other visitors, so at least there wasn’t a cacophony of children shouting. So, sort of recommended….

This is a slightly complex venue which is today a series of underground pubs and bars of various types. Originally this was built as a quarry in the thirteenth century, later becoming a dungeon and the largest air raid shelter in the city during the Second World War. In the 1960s it was turned into a nightclub which was operated by Shirley Crabtree (better known as the wrestler Big Daddy) although that lasted less than a year before the authorities had it closed down. Then the site was used as a dump for rubbish, which wasn’t ideal.

A few years ago vast amounts of material were removed from the cellars (the stuff dumped there in the 1970s which included a lot of heavy rubble) so that they could be opened up for public access. Hence the pubs and clubs that are here now. The two photos above are of the two entrances to the vaults, with each of the individual freeholds having to be repurchased following their sale in the mid-twentieth century.

The entrance corridor, suitably slightly haunting.

Photos of the descent down to the ground floor. Apparently the local museum has helped to provide some of the items displayed on the wall, all of which have added some real character.

I only visited one venue in the complex, as that was the only one that seemed open when I visited and also the only one that is listed on CAMRA’s Whatpub (some others are listed, but they’re marked as permanently closed). It’s a quirky venue, but it’d be hard not to be when you’re at the bottom of a complex like this. It’s a large pub and some people may say that there’s a very slight feel of damp, but I call that atmosphere. And who wants generic and sterile piffle. Back to the beer, I went for the Maiden Voyage from Bosun’s Brewery and it was entirely agreeable.

There has been some controversy about this place and apparently some arguments between the tenants and landlords that I don’t understand and don’t really need to. However, it’s an interesting location to visit and definitely recommended. And it makes sense to have a beer when exploring, so a win-win. And here’s a BBC local news story about the opening a few years ago……

This is the Sparrow pub in Bradford, opened in 2011 and taken over by Kirkstall Brewery of Leeds a couple of years ago.

Located in a former shop, it’s bright and airy, with extra seating available outside in the blazing hot sun (it’s been too hot again today). It doesn’t really have a feel of a pub and has more of a cafe bar arrangement to it, but everything was clean.

The cask and keg selection neatly written up at the end of bar, with a decent selection of different beer styles. There seems to be a little cluster of decent bars here on North Parade, the Record Cafe is over the road and I’ve noticed a couple of other places I’ll hopefully get to visit.

I went for the Black Band Porter, completely forgetting that I’ve had it before (at the Three Legged Mare in York) but it was equally good this time around, a nice coffee aftertaste. Those Seabrook crisps were delicious, I nearly got myself another pack but moderation is the key.

Wheeling out my usual standard for a pub, I’d say that anyone moving to the area and coming to this pub to try and meet friends would be successful here. The member of bar staff was friendly, engaging and helpful, with the pub having a laid-back environment. Another rather lovely pub.