Sitting on the corner of Bridge Street and Hall Ings in central Bradford, St George’s Hall is one of the oldest concert halls still in use anywhere in the United Kingdom. The grade II* listed building was opened on 29 August 1853, following a foundation stone laying by the Earl of Zetland in 1851, and has been a fixture of Bradford’s cultural life ever since. It currently seats up to 1,335 people, with standing capacity for 1,550 at concerts, a significant reduction from the original design capacity of 3,500.
Origins and Construction
The impetus for the hall came from Bradford’s rapid growth in the early nineteenth century, when existing venues – the Exchange Buildings and the Mechanics’ Institute – could no longer meet the city’s demand for public meetings and concerts. In 1849, the city’s mayor, Samuel Smith, brought together a group of shareholders and raised £16,000 in £10 shares to fund a new music hall. The project drew on more than twenty-two competing designs before the submission by architects Henry Francis Lockwood and William Mawson was selected. German Jewish wool merchants who had settled in Bradford because of its textile industry contributed significantly to the building’s financing. The hall was built from ashlar sandstone – sourced from Leeds, as Bradford’s own quarries were not yet in full production – and the exterior architectural sculpture, including swags and keystone heads, was carried out by Robert Mawer.
Architecture and Restoration
The hall was the first building in Bradford constructed in an Italianate style rather than the Greek Revival style that had previously dominated. Its design drew on Birmingham Town Hall and Liverpool St George’s Hall as models, though the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner was unimpressed, describing it in his book on the West Riding of Yorkshire as a “poor relation” of those two buildings. Locals were more welcoming, and Lockwood and Mawson went on to receive further commissions in Bradford city centre. The interior was remodelled after the Second World War and again following fires in the 1980s. A £9 million restoration programme began in March 2016, and the hall reopened in February 2019 with improved seating and sightlines, a flexible stage, and refurbished bars and foyers.