It is twenty-five to eleven on a Sunday morning (for the gates are closed across the Carnegie Library entrance) about a century ago and a postcard photographer has taken the opportunity to record Keighley’s impressive centre in tranquillity. Shrubs give the Town Hall Square a park-like appearance.
The substantial lady in black looks set for church.
From left to right, the Public Library had opened in 1904, the Temperance Institute in 1896 and the Mechanics’ Institute in 1870, the clock being added to its tower in 1892.
Arguably Keighley’s most prestigious Victorian building, this was the work of the famous Bradford architectural partnership of Lockwood and Mawson and also accommodated a School of Science and Art and a Trade and Grammar School. Indeed the Mechanics’ Institute provided the town’s focal point.
Early in 1962, after a Saturday night dance, the Mechanics’ Institute burned out during a night so cold that the fire-fighters water froze down its walls.
The tower survived and its repaired clock continued to tell Keighley the time for several years before being demolished to make way for the unimaginative bulk of Keighley College.
The photograph was supplied by Dorothy Burrows, of Shipley.
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