Arts for All - Town Hall

On the Arts for All panel there's an embroidery of the interior of the Victoria Hall, within the Town Hall, hand stitched by Gill Cooke.

'Directly influenced by Liverpool's St George's Hall and indirectly by the Baths of Caracalla, the basilican form is expressed by coupled Corinthian columns and pilasters separating the bays'

Brodrick also designed the original ten cut glass chandeliers but only three survive and are now in the Civic Hall. The current lights were installed in the 1930s. The organ was the largest ever built by an English firm, at the time, with 6,500 pipes. Henry Smart and William Spark designed it, Gray and Davison (a London firm) built it and the architectural case was designed by Brodrick.

It must have been spectacular for the people of Leeds in the nineteenth century. Reminds me of the Great Exhibition scene in 'North and South'.

Information for this piece from Susan Wrathmell's Pevsner Architectural Guide of Leeds.