As part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture a new landscape ornament has appeared on an elevated spot above the little town of Haworth, best known as the home of the Brontë sisters. Creative Director Shanaz Gulzar commissioned four artists to create site-specific works for Penistone Hill Country Park. The project is called Wild Uplands as the artworks are sited on a lofty and lonely common (the wily, windy moors of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights) that is only ten miles or so from busy Bradford.
Tag: Bradford
Angram Dam in miniature, Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire.
Courtesy of Nidderdale Museum.
Most of the structures featured in these pages decorate vast estates or landscapes, or at least substantial gardens. But the sculpture pictured here is something a little different – it started life as a project for men building a reservoir, and later spent many years ornamenting a quiet garden in a Yorkshire village. It is a scale model of the dam and valve tower at Angram Reservoir, north of Pateley Bridge in the old West Riding of Yorkshire, and was built by two of the masons who worked on the construction of the reservoir.
The Spy Tower, Fagley, West Yorkshire
Early in the 19th century Benjamin Farrer built a tower close to his home in Fagley, then a village on the edge of Bradford. The elegant edifice declined after its builder’s death and survived for less than a century. But that was time enough to accumulate the usual fanciful folly stories.
The Grotto, Ingleborough Hall, Clapham, North Yorkshire
Constructed early in the 19th century, this rocky grotto was built in the grounds of Ingleborough Hall, home to the Farrer family. Later it was a favoured spot of Elizabeth Farrer (1853-1937), and has thus became known by the wonderfully comforting name of Aunt Bessie’s Grotto. Here tea was served by the staff, whilst the family enjoyed the wonderful view to Thwaite Scars.