A Wakefield Trinity

The central theme in my new book, Back on Track in 2022, is a love of place. Whenever I visit new places, I tend to quickly form a view of them, based on first impressions and early encounters. Of course, this could quickly amount to a rush to judgement - even prejudice or a self-fulfilling prophecy if I’m too swayed early on or if I haven’t given myself a chance to uncover true delights through a lack of planning.

We have been to Wakefield before. I find the Hepworth [2011] a difficult building to love, being so flat-faced, angular and uniform. If “stark” and “concrete” are amongst your favourite words, then it may be more to your liking. Sometimes, the modern art, sculpture and installations inside matches the exterior very well, though I’ve been grateful in the past for some stand-out moments. A Martin Parr photographic exhibition comes to mind.

All the UK’s former industrial towns and cities face the same urban planning problem – what to do with that no-man’s land lying between the central business district in the inner urban area and the surrounding residential districts. In the old days, this was the over-crowded zone of old industries and factory workers’ housing. Through slum clearance programmes and the gradual decay of a jumble of manufacturing premises that are now mostly gone, what to do with it has become a challenge for any cash-strapped local authority.

Progress has often been in the form of vast paved areas interrupted by a sprinkling of new saplings - if they can survive unwanted attention, some convenient [if initially unintended] car parking opportunities on former wasteland within walking distance of the centre, a new public building or two, and, hopefully, a facelift for whatever listed buildings are left behind. Old terraced street patterns together with their names disappear for ever in favour of curvy, widened inner-ring roads. As always, it works better in some places than others.

Another more recent addition to Wakefield since our previous visit is the West Yorkshire History Centre, opened in 2017, and this is our immediate destination and the main purpose for revisiting the city on this occasion. This dramatic construction is modernist and imposing, but rather curious. It is fully glazed at ground level, whilst the upper layers are all metal-cladded, a sort of glass-bottomed ship cutting through the waves of downtown Wakefield. The historic records archive inside was well-organised, and free library access to ancestry websites online was certainly quicker and easier to navigate than from home. The receptionist was welcoming and helpful and apparently unmoved by the repetitive thuds and clattering from the skateboarding activities taking place on the slabs immediately outside the entrance.

With our job done in the archives, we asked about the possibilities of a late lunch, but there is no food at the WYHC. The recommended café opposite had closed at 2.00, which is probably itself a record in my experience, but Kirkgate station is in view and it has a café that I’ve heard has a positive reputation. We wandered over, avoiding the skateboarders and giving as wide a berth as possible to the extremely thin and “old before his time” bloke leaning against a fence and swigging a purplish liquid from a plastic bottle, surrounded by a gaggle of junior-school-age children buzzing him like wasps round a honey pot.

The frontage of Kirkgate station dating from 1858 is magnificent, reflecting the brash self-confidence of the Victorian railway companies. Cleaned up and imposing, its only when you step inside that the first impression bubble is burst, pretty much straight away. The renowned café is shuttered from head to foot. In spite of relatively recent refurbishment, the station, though relatively vast, is still unmanned. The platforms are extensive but the whole place feels bleak to me, not helped by that enormous and obsolete wall that formerly held up the overall roof, which incongruously dominates the scene.

Still lunch-less, we returned to our car just in time to see a young man, all in black with a hoody and face mask, pull to a sudden halt on his black motorised bicycle alongside two youths standing on a street corner. An exchange took place and he was off as quickly as he had arrived. It was a brazen act, with no effort made at concealment on either part. Somehow, in inner-urban 2022 Wakefield, it didn’t seem to be much of a surprise, at all.    

Comparisons of architectural style, appreciation of modern art and dabbling in family history from a comfy chair in a nice warm well-lit room all seemed a chasm away from the raw reality of “existing rather than living” for some folk on the east side of Wakefield. Charles Dickens flagged up these contrasts two centuries ago, but it increasingly seems we have not moved on much in that respect during the full lifetime of the steam railway.