Discovering a window on city’s history
Historian Janet Senior spends two years researching Bradford City Hall’s impressive stained glass
THEY ARE monuments to some of the great and the good of Bradford – but the inclusion of some family shields on the windows of Bradford City Hall are puzzling historians, despite a two-year investigation into the artworks.
Liverpool artist Henry Gustave Hiller was commissioned to create almost 100 hand-painted stained glass windows featuring heraldic shields to decorate the new banqueting hall between 1906 and 1909.
But while some of his subjects - such as the founder of Saltaire, Titus Salt, and city landowner the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, had very clear links to the city, others have thrown up a mystery for local historian and author, Janet Senior.
And some of the shields themselves seem to have no historical record and could have even been ‘borrowed’ from other families.
Miss Senior was asked to take on the project by the Lord Mayor’s office after a tour to view the windows two years ago.
“The person leading the tour was asked a question by a member of the group that he couldn’t answer,” she said. “I’m one of those people who always butts in, and I happened to know the answer. He took me to one side and asked me if I knew anything about heraldic shields, and two years later, here we are.”
During the course of her research, Miss Senior, who gives local history talks as part of Bradford Historical and Antiquarian Society, scoured historical records, newspaper archives, books and papers to find out more about the almost 100 windows and people each design represented. While the vast majority of windows are heraldic shields, with a family name, some represent groups of people, like the special plate commemorating the committee that commissioned the building of the banquet hall extension.
Miss Senior said: “It was quite a complicated process. The problem was, not all the shields belonged to the people they were given to.
“Some, such as the Duke of Lancaster or the Lacey family, were perfectly entitled to a coat of arms, but others, such as some of the wool barons, were not, and seem to have been given a shield given to someone of the same name.
“We also have no idea at all why the people were chosen to be represented on the windows - or similarly, why some people were left out.”
Notable absences include the industrialist and MP William Edward Forster, and the first mayor of Bradford from 1846, who is missing despite the inclusion of other mayors and lord mayors. Others who have been included are the Stanhope, Bolling, Baildon and Jowett families, and Phillippa Hainault, the wife of Edward II, who was given Bradford in her dowry when she married.
But it is some inclusions that have proved the most “puzzling”.
“One shield is dedicated to ‘Charles, Prince of Wales’, and the font places it with some of the shields from 1909,” Miss Senior said.
“But the coat of arms is not for the then Prince of Wales, who would later become George V, and who visited Bradford in 1904 to unveil a statue of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.
“There is similar coat of arms belonging to the Stuart Prince of Wales but there seems to be no connection between him and Bradford at all. We wonder if it was all a big mistake. If anybody knew the answer, I’d be delighted to know.”