Category: West Yorkshire

And another post which is primarily just photos….. This is the Bradford Industrial Museum, which is of a substantial size and it’s also free of charge in common with other museums and galleries operated by the city council. There’s plenty to see, including a row of industrial cottages which were taken down brick by brick to be reassembled here and they are fitted out with interiors from over the last century.

The main museum, which has been open since 1974, is located in a former mill building, Moorside Mills, and there are an impressive amount of collections here. Unlike the National Science and Media Museum in the city, which seemed to be poorly curated and in desperate hunt for a purpose, this museum is beautifully curated and seems absolutely clear about what it is trying to do. There are collections of textile machinery, industrial machinery and also a transport section with trams, cars and trains.

To see everything here is likely to take a couple of hours and I can imagine that children would very much enjoy a visit. The staff were friendly and conversational, with one of them telling me about the history of modern Bradford and also listing his favourite pubs, information that always comes in useful to me. It might not be the most up-to-date of museums, but it’s clearly cared for and an example of what a heritage organisation should be doing. I would write more, but my blog backlog keeps growing and this will do for now, but there were plenty of individual exhibits that greatly interested me.

The Bradford Police Museum can only be accessed as part of a guided tour, which costs £5 per person. As an early aside, Google insist that they’re closed, even though they (and I) have told them that they’re not. The bonus for this tour is that Covid rules issued by the council, who are responsible for the building, means they are having to do private tours only and for no additional charge. The police museum is located in Bradford City Hall, which was constructed between 1870 and 1873 and was inspired by the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where I managed to get to in 2020.

The initial welcome was friendly, but the volunteers, who I think are all former police officers, were dealing with an abusive visitor to the premises. He refused to wear a mask as the law said he didn’t have to. The guide explained the council had set additional rules to protect their staff and that was the end of it. The guy continued to be rude to the guides and I although I must admit that I liked watching the free drama unfolding in front of me, I felt sorry for the guide. Fortunately, they weren’t going on a tour, they were there for other reasons.

My tour then began by being walked around the building so that I could enter as a criminal would have done. The building was closed for this purpose in the 1970s, when it was used by the prison service in its final years. The guide explained how the police would have checked my details and also showed me where they’re hoping to fit out next year a room that was used by the doctor if he was called.

This is a fake door which was put in during the filming of Peaky Blinders, and that bit of the corridor to the right is apparently in the programme. However, the element afterwards was filmed elsewhere, but the guide said you wouldn’t know as they’d edited it so well. There’s an original door exactly like the fake one which is to the right of me when I took the photo, although it doesn’t go anywhere as it has been bricked up behind the door.

The former office of the person in charge and they’ve got an original restraining chair from the nineteenth century. Apparently a fair number of visitors comment that the model looks a bit like Ian Hislop….

There are male and female cells here, but the male cells are now used by the council for file storage.

A toilet of unknown age, with the cells not having any private facilities.

One of the cells and this one has had some ghostly incidents. There was once a slope to this cell so if someone was sick it would just pour towards the gutter, so standing near the window would have been sensible. I was originally shown into a different cell, but it became apparent that the ceiling appeared to be falling down. The guide thought best that we didn’t linger in there, but it’s a reminder of how expensive and challenging these buildings are to keep well maintained.

I was told in advance that there was only one place where I couldn’t take photos, which was in a cell used in the 1970s for prisoners on their way to court, or on their way back. There’s graffiti all over the walls which has now become an important piece of social history and I’m impressed that they’ve kept it. They don’t want photos taking here though as many of the prisoners who had written on the walls are still alive. One guy had written on the back of the door “I had expected two years I got life” and someone elsewhere in the cell had written “expected life, didn’t get it”, so swings and roundabouts….

Those cells are inaccessible for those on the tour, they’re the ones used for storage by the council.

A slightly wonky photo unfortunately. But I was taken up the stairs from the cells into the court room, with this photo showing mostly the public galleries.

And standing looking at where the judge would have sat. The council’s Chief Executive has taken the judge’s former robing room as their office, so there’s no way to sit in that chair. Apparently younger children are allowed to scramble across, but it’s thought best not to let adults do it. This is also where some people get married, which seems a slightly odd location, but each to their own…..

That witness box to the right hand side of the photo has only just been recovered from eBay a few weeks ago. It went missing in the 1970s and someone observant noticed that it was for sale on eBay and fortunately the seller co-operated with returning it.

The guide mentioned that there was a tunnel underneath the judge’s chair which was once used by anyone needing to cross the courtroom, as it wasn’t allowed to cross in front of the judge. The guide said it was usually just children who wanted to use this tunnel today, but I felt the need to have a little look as well.

These were the steps that I was taken up into the courtroom, and then back down again.

After going back into the former holding area for prisoners, I was then shown towards where the police museum is. There has been a deliberate decision not to feature the Yorkshire Ripper or the Bradford stadium fire as it was thought too emotional and too raw. There’s more of a focus on the Victorian policing, which is appropriate given the age of the building.

The guide explained this was the former police briefing room and he had used this when in the police force. I had expected a tour of around 45 minutes, but the guide was so conversational, engaging and interesting that my tour lasted for nearly three hours. I was fascinated to hear the stories from his time in the police force and he was very knowledgeable about the history of the building and the criminal justice system.

These are challenging times for the museum given the limited number of people on tours and also the relatively low number of people booking anyway. However, for the £5 admission fee, I think it’s superb value for money. Definitely recommended and I was delighted with the engagement from the tour guide, very pleased to have gone on this.

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….).