Former Wool Exchange - Bradford, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 47.665 W 001° 45.123
30U E 582203 N 5961371
This Venetian Gothic building was built as a wool exchange in 1867 when Bradford was a major tectile town and known as the wool capital of the world.
Waymark Code: WMZMMF
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/02/2018
Views: 2
The building is a Historic England Grade I listed building. The listing details were compiled when it still operated as a wool exchange. Trading has since ceased and the main part of the building is now a book store with a modern glass frontage. There area also a few other small retail units.
"2. Competition winning design of 1864 by Lockwood and Mawson. The foundation stone was laid by the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston. Completed in 1867. Occupying a triangular island site, the building has 3 main storeys of very finely masoned Bradford sandstone with a prominent clock tower at the north end. Red and yellow sandstone dressings. In type the design looks to the precedent of the great Flemish Cloth Halls but the style is Venetian Gothic, particularly in the polychromy and the serrated openwork of the parapet cresting. (An unexecuted design for Halifax Town Hall by sir G G Scott was perhaps a more immediate influence). Steep hipped slate roof with ridge cresting. Pointed ground floor arcade, originally open, with shafts and geometrical tracery. Coupled shafted lights to first floor and similar but shorter tripled lights to second floor. Both with toothed weathered sill courses and carved impost bands. Bartizan pinnacled turrets to each corner. Rose windows to south end. The north tower provides a grand open porch on the ground floor, with canopied statues to corners, and roses in 3 tall stages to the clock stage with crocketed gables applied to each face and pinnacled bartizan corner turrets. Similar parapet existing as on main building and sharp spire surmounted by crocketed pinnacle. In the spandrel of the ground floor arcade are portrait medallions of the following notables: facing Market Street: Cobden, Sir Titus Salt, Stephenson, Watt, Arkwright, Jacquard, Gladstone, Palmerston. Facing Bank Street: Raleigh, Drake, Columbus, Cook and Anson. The main hall is still used as a Wool exchange and has finely detailed lofty hammer-beam roof with wrought iron work decoration. The hall is surrounded by tall polished granite columns with foliate capitals and there is an outer south aisle arcade with good naturalistic foliage carving. Lively wrought ironwork balcony and staircase balustrade. The Wool Exchange, perhaps more than any other building, symbolises the wealth and importance that Bradford had gained by the mid C19, on the basis of the wool trade."
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