Wakefield isn’t really an automatic choice to spend your 43rd
birthday. In my defence it was probably
the only time of year I could persuade Neil to go to a sculpture gallery with
me – The Hepworth Gallery to be precise.
Getting to Wakefield from Manchester is easy enough – M60,
M62, M1, exit junction 41 and the A650 into town. Word of warning – don’t travel back to
Manchester after 3pm on a Friday unless you want to spend time in a traffic
jam. As we were going to the Hepworth
Gallery we parked at the gallery’s car park and it cost £5. If I was going to Wakefield again I probably
park at the edge of town on the nearby retail parks, which would undoubtedly be
cheaper or free.
The Hepworth Gallery is a relatively new feature to
Wakefield, built in 2011 to house the works of Barbara Hepworth and host
temporary art exhibitions. The building
itself is a very stark, grey, concrete building in the brutalist style. It’s definitely not going to appeal to
everyone, but all its planes and angles make great photo opportunities. Inside the gallery the stark architecture
continues - if you like polished concrete then this is the place to go. We wandered through the gallery and it
reaffirmed my love for Barbara Hepworth’s abstract sculptures. There were other exhibits throughout the
gallery and there was a group of sculptures that looked like oversized cow
poo. Some of it was gold coloured, but
it remained in my mind as cow poop. The
gallery is situated by a weir and large windows overlook it. If you are of a visually sensitive
disposition don’t spend too much time looking out of the windows as it can
bring on motion sickness. As it was a
Friday the gallery wasn’t busy and I did notice in one of the education rooms
there was a disability group doing some art, which was good to see. It’s a nice gallery, but rather niche with its
focus on sculpture. I’m not sure this
place is going to appeal to everybody, but it’s nice to find places like this
in working class towns.
Outside the Hepworth Gallery I was surprised to find a
boatyard, especially as it’s over 50 miles inland. I was fascinated by this and to be perfectly
honest I found it more interesting than some of the exhibits inside the museum.
As we’d paid £5 for parking, we thought it would be better
to walk into the town centre. It should
have taken 10 minutes, but as we had no idea where we were going, it took 20
minutes instead. My advice is to look
out for the tower blocks and head for them.
Normally doing that would lead you to a dodgy council estate. In Wakefield
it leads you to The Ridings Shopping centre - I’d never seen so many tower
blocks built on top of one.
The Ridings Shopping Centre is one of two main shopping
precincts in Wakefield. I think it dates back to the 1960s/early
1970s. As with other buildings dating
back from that period, it hasn’t aged well and I found the place quite dark and
depressing. It tended to have the cheap
high street shops and as a result drew a lower working class clientele. We noticed there was a big queue in the
middle of the shopping centre. It turned
out that the local police were paying each person £10 to have their photo taken
for their video line up database. It was
both depressing and sad to see.
As we wandered through Wakefield we found the other shopping
centre, which houses the main high street shops. This was a much nicer shopping experience as
it was brighter, livelier and more modern.
Regeneration money has definitely poured into Wakefield in recent years
and nearby Wakefield Market has been rebuilt to combine both an indoor and
outdoor market – it looks great.
Apart from the two main shopping centres there are lots of
side streets with independent shops, cafes and bars dotted along them - it’s
definitely worth exploring them. The
good thing about Yorkshire is the local craft supply shops and there are quite
a few in Wakefield. My favourite is “Wool n Stuff” as it has a great range of
fabric and I spent quite a bit of my birthday money in there. They stock materials that you wouldn’t
normally find in Manchester. It turned
out the shop had a family connection to a local textile firm. I’m fed up with all the floral Cath
Kidsonesque fabrics you find in most textile shops these days and it’s brilliant
to find shops like this that stock a wider range of designs. I’d happily revisit Wakefield on the basis of
this shop.
We also found a vintage shop on a side street selling
records so Neil had to have a browse. It
was quite good and reaffirmed that I should have picked up the £5 typewriter in
Stoke as they were going for £25 here. I
was eavesdropping on conversations in here and the general gist of it were cool
people being cool with each other, talking about cool happenings in cool places
– it was all very cool and everyone was coolly attired.
Architecturally Wakefield is a mish-mash of lots of periods.
For example: a Tudor style black and
white building next to a modern shopping centre; brutalist architecture from the
1960s to the present day; and red brick Victorian side streets. There are plenty of Victorian pubs across
Wakefield although some did appear to be quite intimidating. On the other hand, Wakefield Cathedral did
stand out as a particularly lovely building perched on the highest point of
Wakefield. As it was a sunny day,
workers were perched on its steps and walls, enjoying the sun whilst eating their
sandwiches.
We obviously hit the charity shops and there were plenty in
Wakefield. It did make me laugh in one
shop where there were some young geeky volunteers who were mucking about with
each other. One of them attempted to
test his new found social skills on Neil by engaging him in conversation. Somehow I think this young lad has social
skills more suited for a job in IT rather than working in a shop. We didn’t find much in Wakefield, but with
the vintage shop nearby I reckon they regularly go through the charity shops
creaming off the good stuff.
My only knowledge of Wakefield came from David Peace’s Red
Riding Quartet, which is a seriously grim but gripping story based in 1970s and
1980s West Yorkshire – it doesn’t paint a great picture of the place. Happily I can tell you Wakefield isn’t like
that anymore. Obviously it has its rough
parts and experiences deprivation, but Wakefield is definitely going down the
cultural regeneration route with The Hepworth Gallery and the nearby Yorkshire
Sculpture Park. There are some little green
shoots of growth going on and it will be interesting to see how that progresses
over the next few years. Still it was a
strange place to go to on your birthday, but it did make me smile to see a
granny walk down the street with pink streaks in her hair – I just love that
random sort of stuff.
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