Spring in Northcliffe

It was a glorious blue sky day, though still cold enough to need a thick winter coat and gloves. I took a walk up the hill, for a change, to Northcliffe Park. There is blossom in the little copse of trees beside the big meadow. 

The meadow is a wonderful area, much beloved by dog walkers as their dogs can run free here. The lady in the distance had a cockapoo and, when they got nearer, it kindly brought me its ball and wanted petting. Seemed to take a liking to me... perhaps it could tell I'm already a cockapoo's granny! I rather liked the pattern of shadows cast by the trees onto the grass. 

 

There's a wonderful panoramic view from the top meadow. You can see right round from Bingley and the St Ives estate on the left, taking in Hope Hill and then round towards Shipley town centre. Blogger won't really display a true pano view so this is truncated. Saltaire is down in the valley on the left of this shot:

 

In my haste to avoid getting an ugly litter bin in my shot, I  managed to crop into the tree on the left (below), which was covered in yellow blossom (not yet leaves). I'm not sure what species it was. Some of these trees are birches but I don't think that one is. 

Lower down in the park it's less 'wild' and more cultivated. There are more blossom trees and in this area there is a children's playground.

Daffodils are planted on the slope beside the bowling green and in summer there will be a wildflower border here. 

Rather alarmingly, a 6 metre deep sinkhole has opened up on the edge of the bowling green, now covered with a metal grid and fenced off whilst the authorities decide how to tackle it. It has been identified as a collapsed unrecorded mine shaft. The area was extensively mined for coal up to the 1880s and at least 44 mine shafts have already been found in the park by a team of researchers. So this appears to be number 45! 

Easter joy!

I had a wander round Hirst Wood nature reserve again and compared to my last visit (see HERE) the difference is astonishing. Daffodils have grown and flowered, there is blossom on the trees, new green shoots are pushing up through the earth and lots of colour is beginning to show. What a joy! 

The fact that Spring coincides with Easter in the Northern hemisphere always seems 'right' to me. There is such an upsurge of energy and hope. 

Christ is risen! Happy Easter to all. 

Incidentally, there's an elaborate, new bug hotel (above) on the reserve, fashioned in the letters HWRG (Hirst Wood Regeneration Group, who are the people who have created the nature reserve). I'm sure all manner of bugs will be grateful to find such an attractive new home, full of nooks and crannies for resting, breeding and hibernating. 

A march through time

I walked back from the Art Gallery to the rail station in Leeds along Park Row - and, for me, it was like taking a march through time. This long street effectively has always separated the shopping/retail sector of Leeds from the business/financial district. It was traditionally where many of the banks had their main branches. There are still a few banks and finance houses but many of the buildings have now been converted into restaurants and bars. 

Where the nostalgia lies, for me, is that this street was where I first worked on leaving university - and that is a shocking half a century ago! I even find it hard to recall exactly which building I worked in. I think it was this one:

It's now a Wetherspoon's pub but back in the day it was part of National Westminster Bank. My first job was a temporary role in an office that dealt with import and export payments to France. I even had to speak (halting, schoolgirl) French on the phone to counterparts in Europe. It was a fascinating introduction to the world of work and they offered me a permanent role but my heart was set on working in personnel. After a few months I managed to get a job in HR with the Yorkshire Electricity Board and my stint in Leeds city centre came to an end. Probably just as well - the lure of shops on the doorstep wasn't too good for my very tiny bank balance as I started adult life. 

Everything changes and there is a lot of building work going on in Leeds. Victorian stone is preserved but, in the spaces between, steel and glass predominates. The station end of Park Row opens into City Square. The magnificent Post Office building is also now restaurants, though some of the bronze statues of the great and good remain, gracing the Square since the turn of the 20th century.  Those below are James Watt, the engineer and John Harrison, a local cloth merchant and benefactor. 

 

Art attack

Leeds Art Gallery was featuring an Open Exhibition with some very contemporary works - paintings, sculptures, installations -  by local artists. Most of them did little to touch me and some seemed downright weird to me! I enjoyed far more the pieces on display from the permanent collection. It's interesting to see what leaps out and 'attacks' you when simply browsing a gallery. 

My absolute favourite was the tranquil scene above, which seemed to glow with a soft light. Oil on canvas, it was painted in the 1920s by C.R.W Nevinson, entitled 'Silver Estuary' - and silver it seemed, almost shimmery in its effect. I decided it was a photographer's painting, very much the kind of scene I'd try to capture with my camera.  (Nevinson is better known as a war artist.) 

 

The gallery has a selection of paintings by  John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893), a Leeds-born Victorian artist, influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. His moody, detailed landscapes capture skilful lighting effects, as in 'Reflections on the Aire - on strike' (above), which the gallery managed to acquire for its collection only last year. In contrast, some of his slightly earlier work featured fashionable young women like his wife Fanny, pictured below in their garden at Knostrup Hall.  

This curious sculpture was called: 'Apollo Admiring Two Vases in Black' by Edward Allington (1951 -2017), made of painted wood, plastic and cast resin. I thought it was quirky but engaging. Allington was part of the 1980s New British Sculpture movement, which included famous names like Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread and Anthony Gormley. He often referenced the classical art of Greece and Rome in his work. 

Finally, this caught my eye. It's a maquette (a small model) by Anthony Gormley, for a sculpture called 'Brick Man' that was proposed for a site near Leeds rail station. It was to be 120 feet tall and would have been the largest sculptural monument in the UK at that time (1986), pre-dating Gormley's well known and massive 'Angel of the North' (1998) in Gateshead. It was planned that visitors could ascend a staircase inside and look out over the city through the figure's ears. There was local opposition to it and it was denied planning permission, so that it was never built. I imagine there are those now kicking themselves for having missed the opportunity, given how widely known and well-regarded Anthony Gormley's work has become. 

 

The joy of colour

Leeds Central Library has its wonderfully ornate and tiled Victorian stairwell (see yesterday) but the adjacent Art Gallery also has a gloriously colourful stairwell, painted with vibrant geometric murals. I couldn't live with it all the time but it was certainly a burst of joy on a chilly winter day. Interesting too to study the visual psychology of it: how some colours come forward and some recede; how some juxtaposed colours seem slightly differently hued, dependant on their neighbours.  

Library stairwell

More photos of Leeds Central Library, which I think is a really remarkable piece of Victorian ingenuity and taste. It dates back to around 1880. The main stairwell is mind-blowing (although rather tricky to photograph and these are just taken with my phone). Each level is slightly different, with stone or wrought iron balustrades and soaring arches. It has mosaic tiled floors, tiles on the walls, stained glass windows and an ornate handrail with stone dogs and lions at the top and bottom of each flight. The pillars are made of 380 million-year-old Devonian coral reef with fossils in them. It is fascinating and reminds me a little of an Escher drawing in its complexity. The library is the kind of building I'd love to be taken round on an organised tour, as I imagine there is more to be seen and learned about than is visible in a quick trip when it is open for public use. 

Leeds Central Library

I made a trip to Leeds recently to meet a friend and we decided to visit Leeds Art Gallery. It is adjacent to the main public library, the Leeds Central Library (above right), so we popped in for a coffee in The Tiled Hall, which serves both facilities. The library building from the outside looks fairly 'Victorian municipal' and indeed it was built around 1880 to serve, alongside the Town Hall (on the left above), as municipal offices and a library.  (By the way, the crowd of people outside were absorbed in playing chess on giant tiled boards.)

The Tiled Hall was the library's Reading Room: a huge, wonderfully vaulted space with columns, beautiful tiles and a lovely parquet floor. It has been fully restored to its original splendour in recent years, having over the years been altered and covered up. 

Elsewhere in the library there are fabulous decorative effects, like the terracotta tiled columns in the original lending library:

It has lovely stained glass windows:

Everywhere there are examples of decorative ceramic tiles and mosaics. It's a real feast for the eyes.

It seems that even in days gone by people were wont to leave their mark... Parts of the stonework have been scored by graffiti, some of it going back almost to the earliest days of the building, as shown by the date of 1893. 

Spring lambs

A walk through the fields around Burley in Wharfedale at the weekend was punctuated by the sweet sounds of lambs bleating. They can't be very old and are just beginning to explore the big, wide world into which they've been introduced. Some of them seemed to be having a mid-morning nap, oblivious to the stunning views beyond their field. 

Others were bolder - at least as long as their twin was nearby. They seemed quite curious to study the human beings studying them! 

 

More blossoming

Along the river banks, the trees are only just beginning to show a little haze of colour as the leaf buds begin to form. Around the village it's a slightly different picture, with blossom unfolding on the trees. A few days of warmer sunshine would soon have everything bursting out in its glory but so far it's been chilly and damp. The blossom tree in the Wash House Garden is looking pretty though the rain has dashed some of its petals to the ground already. 

I've seen a few of the Star magnolias (Magnolia Stellata) in bloom (see below), though the ones with tulip shaped flowers are still in bud. I'm hoping we don't get a frost to ruin them. 

There's another pretty pink blossom tree coming into flower on Albert Road. 

Blossoming

The crocuses have faded, the daffodils are bobbing their sunny little heads in the breeze and the early blossom is appearing, though it will be a week or two before the cherry blossom is at its best. 

They have planted quite a few new trees in the park. It will take some years for them to mature but they are already pretty.  

Even in Shipley town centre there are blossom trees around the market place. The Shipley sheep (the name Shipley derives from the Old English words for sheep field) has her back to the trees though, and can't enjoy them.  

This tree on the corner was severely pruned back a few years ago and I wondered if it would ever regenerate but, lo and behold, it has produced quite a lot of blossom again this year.