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.

Faith in the City - Leeds Parish Church

The parish church of Leeds by RD Chantrell for Dr Walter Farquhar Hook, who was vicar from 1837 until 1859. It replaced the medieval church at a cost of £30,000.

The exhibition for Woodbine Willie celebrates 100 years since his ordination as a priest there.

During a diocesan reorganisation in the late C19 the church was denied cathedral status, a fact that historically would have prevented Leeds from becoming a city but the link with Anglican dioceses was broken in 1889 when Birmingham successfully petitioned for city status on the grounds of its large population and history of good local government. So, instead, the church is affectionately known as Leeds Parish Church within the diocese of Ripon and Leeds.

When Pevsner wrote about the building in 1959 he was not enthused by the fact that the railway, in 1869, had cut the church off from the town 'so effectively that it seems to stand at a half-commercial, half-derelict dead end'. We may have all grumbled when the loop route was conceived and in place but at least it made the church more visible and seemingly more accessible to the people of Leeds.

The embroidery was hand painted to the design of James Brown and hand stitched by Joyce James.

LS2000 - Asda Headquarters

Founded in 1949 as Associate Dairies and Farm Stores Limited, the present name is derived from their amalgamation with Asquith Supermarkets in 1965 (Asquith and Dairies).

There seem to have been many changes in the structure of the organisation since then - the dairy division was sold and is now known as Associated Fresh Foods - at the present time though it is owned by Corinth Services Limited, a subsidiary of Wal-Mart.

I quote from the Pevsner Guide to Leeds

"E of the bridge is a path along the river's s bank lined by the tedious, long low three-storey brick range of the Asda Headquarters, 1988 by John Brunton Partnership; one of the first commercial developments in this run-down area. Quasi-traditional, with an unnerving variety of window forms including canted oriels rising to gablets and a clerestory under deep eaves."

I don't think the author is over-impressed but Barbara Hebden did a fabulous job on the embroidery - hand stitched on printed fabric, including french knots.