Bradford has been the UK City of Culture for 2025 and so on a wet Friday in November I ventured over there to visit one of the star attractions which I then followed up by visiting a couple of the city's best drinking spots....
It was wet. Very wet. Very similar to my last visit back in September to the North East to catch up with the family and see Town play at Gateshead in what turned out to be torrential conditions which unbelievably continued in farcical fashion with Town coming away victorious. Regular readers of this blog may by now be scratching their heads thinking "I don't remember reading about that." And you'd be right, I didn't do a blog about it, as it was only a couple of weeks since I'd last written about the area, so in the interests of balance I skipped it. But who knows, maybe one day that watery tale will float to the surface....
So back to this particular wet Friday. I caught the train over to Bradford, the intention then to get a bus or taxi to the Cartwright Art Gallery which is a mile or two out of the city centre at Lister Park. I arrived at Bradford's slightly tarted up Interchange where none of the suggested buses on the gallery's website was on the departure board for the next hour and I'd booked a slot there for 1pm. No worries, I thought, I'll get a taxi from outside the sta........ Not straight away you won't, mate, the former taxi rank in front is now a garden of sorts. So where would my just-ordered Uber pick me up?
Of course, given the weather, Google Maps sent me off in completely the wrong direction, on a busy stretch of road with no pavement and plenty of spray but once it got its bearings, I was sent back all the way I'd come to a spot virtually across from the station on a road between St George's Hall and the Victoria Hotel, where I once had the biggest pay day of my DJ career when I spun the discs at a wedding do there. My Uber was already there waiting for me, and despite the fact that much of Bradford city centre is now pedestrianised and we had to go in a big circle around to get there, I was dropped off outside the entrance to Cartwright Art Gallery with 10 minutes to spare before my booked slot.
I was here to see exhibits from the 4 finalists in the 2025 Turner Prize which were on display here as part of the ongoing City of Culture events. The prize was founded by the Tate Gallery in 1984 to encourage a wider public interest in contemporary art. It is named after the painter JMW Turner who, despite being now regarded as one of our greatest artists, was in his time a rather controversial figure as he experimented with new styles and techniques to paint what were often dramatic landscapes and seascapes. He tried different pigments for example, some of which would fade quickly but he was only concerned about the immediate look of the painting rather than its posterity, a radical view for the conservative 19th century art world. Incidentally, I mentioned Turner in a blog earlier this year when I visited Wapping in East London and visited Turner's Old Star, a former Fullers house in a pleasant location off Wapping Lane. Now a historic, family-run street-corner local, it takes its name from our man who once owned the building and lived here before it became a pub.
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| The artist lived here...Turner's Old Star, Wapping |
The guide to the exhibition says "The Turner Prize is awarded to an artist born or based in the UK, celebrating recent developments in their work. The prize has consistently provoked and shaped debate around contemporary art." And some certainly have caused a stir, such as Damien Hirst's Mother and Child/Divided (the one with the sharks in formaldehyde), Tracey Emin's unmade bed, and Martin Creed's Work No. 227: The lights going on and off consisting of an empty room whose lighting periodically did what it said in the title. So would I see anything like that? Well no, the exhibits from the four nominated artists - Rene Matic, Mohammed Sami, Nnena Kalu, and Zadie Xa were all different and fascinating in their own way reflecting the artists' own experiences. I particularly enjoyed the slightly uneasy and unsettling large canvasses from Mohammed Sami, but all I would say is if you get chance go along and have a look for yourself. It takes less than an hour to get round and is free, booking is required though so they can regulate the flow of visitors. It runs until 22nd February 2026.
After all that culture I needed a drink. I had decided to visit an old stomping ground where I had not been for a while, so I ordered another Uber to take me over to the Fighting Cock, not too far away on Preston Street but given the weather not an appealing 1.7mile walk! The taxi man was chatty, moaning about the road situation in Bradford and the sequencing of the traffic lights, but despite that it didn't take too long for him to get me to one of the city's most famous pubs.
The Fighting Cock (opening image) is situated on a street corner in Preston Street in the middle of a rather rundown industrial area, about 20 minutes walk from the city centre. A former Websters pub, back in the 1980's the unassuming Preston Hotel had become a free house and was managed by 'Big Jim' Wright. Jim was a larger than life character which helped to draw the punters in, and with his partner Sal, they hosted a friendly pub pitched firmly at the beer drinker. The small street corner pub was by now called the Fighting Cock, and started to sell beers from all over the country, many of which had never been seen in the area before, which began to attract a lot of interest and customers both locally and from far and wide.
It was around this time, and around the time when the Turner Prize was established, that I started coming here. In 1983 I had got a job at Grattan, one of the big mail order companies from that time who were based nearby at Anchor House on Ingleby Road. I became a regular visitor drawn by all these amazing beers. Back in those days, the pub lunch was still a big thing, and as a counter to the prevailing pie and a pint they used to serve wonderful warming bowls of steaming chilli with crusty bread. I remember some great lunchtimes here and a reluctance to go back to the office, but Fridays were a different thing as we used to finish early, so many a lunchtime gradually merged into an early evening and a journey home in the dark. Such was the success of the pub that Jim eventually bought the Fighting Cock and formed TFC Alehouses, which included the Red Rooster in Brighouse, the Duck and Drake in Leeds - both of which are still around today, plus two that didn't survive, the Woodcock in Halifax and the Gamecock over in Ashton-under-Lyne. Big Jim's contribution to the pub scene was massive, spread far beyond the area, and should not be underestimated, bearing in mind that back in the 1980's most pubs were still tied to breweries, genuine free houses were few and far between, and most beers were limited in their distribution.
The last time I had visited here was a cold Saturday afternoon in January 2022. The paintwork outside had had a lick of paint since then, the green colour a passing reminder of the pub's Websters heritage. Inside, much of the pub has hardly changed in the past 40 years. You enter a room with bare wooden floorboards, wooden bench seating, and a few tables with the bar directly opposite the door. This leads into a second, more intimate room with a continuation of the bar featuring more hand pumps. A log burner sits in the fireplace, whilst CAMRA awards and old photos are displayed on the walls. Beyond this room is a windowless extension with large chesterfields adding a touch of comfort and luxury to the otherwise rather spartan pub. This part of the pub was not here when I first visited, being a more recent addition along with the inside toilets.
The pub was fairly quiet when I walked in. I settled on the middle part of the pub where a guy was sat on a stool chatting to the bloke behind the bar. I surveyed the eight active hand pumps, which featured predominantly Yorkshire ales from the likes of Taylors and Theakstons. However I headed over the Pennines for a pint of White Cat from Moorhouses. This is a relatively new 3.9% hoppy pale from the Burnley-based outfit featuring Citra and Amarillo which delivered a most enjoyable and refreshing tropical fruit zestiness (NBSS 3.5). I sat at one of the tables facing the bar and I could have been transported back 40 years, the scene had hardly changed. There was a food menu on the table which caught my eye. On the list was Chilli and bread. When I returned to the bar for another pint I asked the guy if they were still doing food. They had stopped at 2 he said, but they could still do the chilli or stew up until 3. So a bowl of chilli was duly ordered, a dish of nostalgia although the bread was smaller than the doorsteps you used to get. But I wasn't complaining, it was delicious and certainly hit the spot on this cold, wet day.
Unfortunately my second pint here, which was Fallen Angel, a 5% premium bitter from Church End was a little tired (NBSS 2.5) and I wasn't surprised to see the pump clip removed and replaced with a different beer as it did come over as approaching the end of the barrel. However I wasn't going to let it detract from what was a most enjoyable return to what is still one of the best pubs around.
If the Fighting Cock represents the best of the Bradford from my early days there in the 1980's, the next place I visited is the best place that has come along in the intervening period. It was another Uber ride to North Parade, where the Record Cafe has been drawing visitors in since it opened in 2014. Unlike the Fighting Cock this is a modern bar based in a former retail unit on a pleasant city centre street where other bars and eateries are to be found amongst the odd Chinese supermarket.
The graphics on the sign on the front of the building give a clue to the attractions to be found within. There is a glass, a pig, and an LP, representing what is a pretty unique combination of beer, charcuterie, and vinyl. The entrance takes you into a single room with a seating area with tables to the immediate right as you go in, with the bar and servery to the right beyond. Further seating with tables is to be found here on the left hand side facing the bar up until where some stairs lead you up to a mezzanine area which features racks of stacked vinyl ranging from old classics to bang up to date releases. Back downstairs the room is cosy despite the huge glass window, reminiscent of those sleepy continental cafes with a calm clutter about them. Hams hang from the ceiling. There are fresh flowers peeping out from a beer can on every table. There are cushions, potted plants, and the lighting is subdued. As befits being a record shop there is an eclectic soundtrack playing in the background.
There are 4 hand pumps on the bar with up to 9 beers also available on tap. Amongst the cask options was an old favourite, Sonoma from Manchester's Track Brewery so I went for one of those. Always an enjoyable and refreshing beer, it was in decent form (NBSS 3). I got another beer and decided to go and have a look at what vinyl they had upstairs and whilst I had not gone up intending to buy anything, after much deliberation I returned downstairs with a copy of Beggar's Banquet by the Rolling Stones, a classic album I'd had before but lost over the years. My previous version had had the sanitised plain white sleeve whilst this was a return to the original banned version featuring a graffiti-covered toilet wall. Hardly controversial, how times change!
I paid for my vinyl and then returned to my seat to enjoy my second pint, this time it I'd gone for a pint of Pale Ale from Leeds-based Anthology who have become one of the area's most consistent brewers, This 4% blond beer was in an excellent condition and the best pint I had all day (NBSS 3.5). As I sat enjoying my pint I was joined by a couple of friends who were in Bradford en route to see a film, and we had a pleasant chat for a while. Our glasses empty, we left the Record Cafe after what had been for me another great visit here, and I left them heading off in the rain to the Peacock Bar nearby. I meanwhile headed over the road to Boar & Fable planning to then visit the Northern Monk bar that has recently opened in the city's new market. However the rain had the final word, and with a fallen tree on the line between Leeds and Bradford, I gave up on that idea and got a final Uber of the day to take me home after a thoroughly enjoyable day in the 2025 City of Culture....
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