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05 Peace Festival Sculpture |
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A
Bradford District Peace Festival was held in November 2005.
Towards the end of the Festival, a Bradford Police Constable, PC
Sharon Beshenivsky was tragically shot and killed whilst
following up a robbery report. |
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and young people involved in the Festival had been creating images
of peace, using wicker and tissue paper. At the close of the Festival,
these images were crafted together by a local artist into a peace
sculpture, taken down to the site of the shooting in Morley Street
and left with the growing array of flowers and other tokens of sympathy. |
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Police on duty were so touched by the sculpture and the message that
it conveyed that they moved it for safe-keeping. The Sculpture is
in the new Police Headquarters in Nelson Street. Unfortunately, viewing
is not possible. |
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This
is one motif from the eight foot high sculpture.
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J B Priestley |
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J
B Priestley: In front of the National Media Museum is a
large, imposing statue of the author J
B Priestley (1894 - 1984), with his coat billowing
out behind. This son of Bradford was born at 34,
Mannheim Road, off Toller Lane. |
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blue plaque marks a later family residence at 5
Saltburn Place a few streets away. In November 1957,
he wrote a letter to the New Statesman periodical in
which he questioned Britain's place in the nuclear arms race. He wrote:
'...what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence by threat
of retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it,
no faith, hope, nor charity in it.' This galvanised public opinion
at a time when the East-West nuclear threat was very real. Although
he was not involved in the organisation of campaigning, Priestley
was a larger than life and well-known figure who through his concern
for the world, and with his letter, inspired the founding of the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. |
To
commemorate his life, his old School, Belle Vue Boys School
on Thorn Lane, off Haworth Road, Heaton has a beautiful stained glass
window in the foyer, which has a Nuclear Disarmament symbol as the
central radiating motif. To see this one needs permission from the
school.
(Contact the school on 01274 493533)
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07
The City Cenotaph |
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The
City Cenotaph or war memorial is on an island of land between
the Alhambra Theatre and the National Media Museum, and in front of
the statue of Queen Victoria.
Created initially in the early 1920's to remember the fallen in the
First World War, it also records the Second |
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War and other conflicts since. It has larger than life-size
figures, one on each side of the main pillar. Each figure - a soldier
and a marine - holds a rifle. |
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both rifles had bayonets as part of the sculpture but by the 1960's
these were deemed too aggressive-looking and the bayonets were removed.
That is why the soldier on the National Media Museum side in particular
does not seem quite right because the balancing |
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bayonet
part of the sculpture is missing. However, the bayonets on both figures
are still replaced for the Remembrance Day services in November every
year!
NB The Pals memorial (see site 01) has now been moved to the garden behind the Cenotaph.
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Aircraft lookout point |
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Aircraft
lookout point:
On the very top of the tall TJ Hughes Department Store
(known as Sunwin House) on |
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Street, to be seen by looking towards the main entrance, is a flat-roofed
room out of line with the Art Deco-style. |
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the Second World War this was the highest point of any occupied building
in the centre of town, so was used as a lookout for approaching enemy
bombers. |
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