Bradford Town Hall

Bradford Town Hall

The Town Hall is a competition-winning design of 1869 by Lockwood and Mawson, completed in 1873. It was extended between 1905 and 1909 to designs by Norman Shaw, executed by the city architect F E P Edwards. The building was conceived by the city to rival the town halls of Leeds and Halifax.

Lockwood and Mawson's original structure occupies a splayed triangular site and rises through three storeys with an attic and steep pitched roofs. The elevations are constructed in Gaisby rock sandstone and are treated in an early to mid-13th century Gothic style. The dominant feature is a 200-foot campanile tower of Tuscan derivation. The competition designs were considerably influenced by Burges and Scott and originally featured a bowed corner at the apex of the site, but this was executed as a polygonal terminal feature instead. The ground floor comprises massive ashlar blocks, while the upper floors are finished in sandstone "brick" with ashlar dressings.

The longest frontage faces Tyrell Street. The ground floor has plain two-light windows. The tall first floor is articulated with two-light shafted windows beneath plate tracery with moulded arches and linking strings. The wall surface of the spandrels was originally intended to feature carved diaper work pierced by circular frames containing carved heads, similar to those on the Wool Exchange, but these details were dispensed with in execution except over the main entrance. The top floor is treated as a continuous arcade articulated by statues of kings and queens in canopied niches. Corbelled eaves are surmounted by a miniature colonnade as parapet, with finialled gabled dormers and pinnacles rising above.

The centrepiece of the long north-east front features an elaborate oriel window set above the portal. The quality of carving is particularly apparent in the multi-shafted jambs of the doorway and the framework of the arch. A fine wrought iron gate of intricate scrollwork with ornate cresting guards the broad flight of steps leading up into the hall.

The extension was proposed in 1902. The city architect F E P Edwards approached Norman Shaw to advise on the design, having already developed the internal distribution. Shaw's express intention was that the new and old work should give "the appearance of one complete building under one roof". However, the council did not approve the addition of attic storeys to the original building, resulting in a visual break in the roof line. Shaw's elevations form a brilliant and witty amalgam of styles drawn from previous works in his career, yet remain respectful of Lockwood and Mawson's design. Gothic, Romanesque Gothic and Queen Anne features with rococo ironwork rise one above the other, capped by two-storey gabled attics of French Gothic derivation. The massive gabled south-west corner features a lofty mullioned hall window lighting the dining hall and a corbelled spire-capped turret inset between the latter and the return. This section is built in fine quality ashlar, with the south link range constructed in sandstone "brick" above the ground floor. A finialled gabled bay leads back into the Lockwood and Mawson building.

The interior reception rooms and dining hall, with its high arched roof and sculpted chimneypiece, are almost certainly due to Norman Shaw. The Council Chamber is top lit on a Greek cross plan with Soanian arches and Gimson plasterwork, William and Mary panelling, and galleries on marble columns. This design may owe more to Edwards, as the building and interior fitting span the period 1905 to 1909. The main entrance hall and staircase in Baroque marble were completed by William Williamson in 1913 to 1914.

The Town Hall still dominates the centre of Bradford, with its campanile serving as a prominent landmark.