Bolton Woods People's Street Party

The bantamspast museum was delighted to be able to play its part in making the first Bolton Woods street party a great success. Held on Saturday 31st August, the party was the first of its kind for Bolton Woods. It was centred around the New Vic Public House on Livingstone Road and children's activities took place both at the pub and at the Bolton Woods Community Centre.The event was opened by the Lord Mayor of Bradford, Khadim Hussain, who welcomed the community in attendance and praised their community spirit following the recent stabbings in the area. Also in attendance was Labour Councillor Vanda Greenwood (Wrose & Windhill). Live music entertainment was provided by the Ali Campbell/UB40 tribute act and local folk singer, Creedy and there, with Caribbean Fusion from Sheffield providing a Caribbean food stall.

The landlord and landlady of the New Vic are keen City fans and several coaches left the pub for both of City’s 2013 Wembley appearances. Therefore, the raffle, in aid of the charity Little Heroes, had several City related prizes: a signed Bradford City shirt; signed Bradford City team picture; and a signed copy of the book "Paraders, the 125 year history of Valley Parade" by David Pendleton. The football club provided the signed shirt, while the museum provided the framed photo and book. The raffle raised nearly £200. 

It is hoped that there will be a repeat of this successful event in 2014. The museum and the football club are delighted to have played a small part in its success.

CTC 73 Forty Years Young

This weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the independent travel club CTC 73. Initially started after the club stopped running coaches to away games, CTC 73 eventually found its niche as the operator of choice for those supporters who enjoyed sampling the public house provision of market town England. In days when the local police were decidedly against visiting supporters drinking with a ten mile radius of the town hosting the football match, CTC 73 decided to go to the nearest market town and enjoy a glass or two there. You would be mistaken for thinking that the trippers were attracted by the ambience and architecture of the ancient market towns, the reason for visiting market towns was a simple one – they are packed with pubs.

The tales from these trips are now the stuff of legend. However, although the trips were far from sober affairs, they were almost always welcomed with open arms (and tills). From Ely to Beverley; Dereham to Stamford; Bury St Edmonds to Brigg, we have left an often positive view of Bradford and its people. The main one being: those boys can certainly drink!

To celebrate CTC 73’s fortieth birthday there will be a reunion/gathering at the Fighting Cock on Preston Street immediately after the Sheffield United home match on Saturday 24 August. Be there or be sober!

An Artistic Donation

 

Bradford City’s 2012/13 season will be long remembered for the club’s double Wembley appearances. The remarkable season has inspired one supporter to commission a painting which will hang in the club’s bantamspast museum. The painting is a combination of private and public memories for Kathryn Hey. As she explains: 

“It was over 32 years ago (1981) when my father took me to see my first football match at Valley Parade.  Sadly this was the only game we saw together before he passed away.  Thanks to his work colleagues, who kindly took me under their wing, I carried on attending.  

“I know he would have been as thrilled and happy as myself for last season’s incredible achievements, the best in my memory.  ‘A dream’ and ‘sensational’ are words that spring to mind. 

“It was for this reason I decided to commission Paul Town, a Football Stadium artist and fellow Bradford City fan to paint this canvas as a thank you to all the players, staff and management at Bradford City. Paul has worked from an original 1950’s print and photographs to create an impression of Valley Parade as my father and many others would have remembered it - including the advertisement for Hey’s brewery that was located on nearby Lumb Lane. The painting also features the Bradford City locomotive, which regularly roared past the ground - the original locomotive nameplate is on display in the main entrance at Valley Parade. As well as loving football, by father was a keen steam train enthusiast and had one of the largest collections and displays in the north of England (most of which now is in the National Railway Museum at York). I take after him for my love of football and trains!

“Throughout the season I’ve made a great many new friends and spent much of my free time at the club.  I’ve always been made to feel so welcome. I’m sure that like myself and many others, my father would have been so proud of our club. A big thank you to Bradford AFC and to all the people I’ve met along the way.”

For the artist the painting has been a labour of love. The Baildon based builder recently began depicting football grounds and has produced and sold several paintings of grounds as diverse as Sunderland’s Roker Park, Heart of Midlothian’s Tynecastle and Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane. Paul said:

“It has been a real honour to be commissioned to paint this piece for the Bradford City museum by lifelong City supporter Kathryn Hey.

“I am myself a city supporter of nearly 40 years and found the research to produce this greatly satisfying. In coordination with both Kathryn, and bantamspast museum’s David Pendleton, we together came up with a design based upon how Valley Parade and the surrounding areas would have looked around the 1940s. I hope to produce many more period paintings of Valley Parade in the future which hopefully will be of interest to all diehard city supporters both young and old. My artwork can be viewed on my Facebook page, Stadium Portraits Paul Town.”

The painting will be on display in the bantamspast museum, currently housed in Bantams Bar on the Kop, in time for the start of the new season. The museum’s David Pendleton said: 

“We are delighted to receive this donation from Kathryn. It is a very kind gift and we thank both Kathryn and Paul for the painting, which we hope will be enjoyed by many City fans this season and beyond. It is a wonderful way to mark the unforgettable 2012/13 season.”

Northern Lines is a community theatre project, supported by the National Lottery. On 27th and 28th of June we are presenting the second of our intergenerational cross community projects that responds to and seeks to transform our city. Considering how Bradford City’s two trips to Wembley have reverberated around the world this year,
Northern Lines are celebrating and investigating the history of Bradford City and the community that surrounds it. Our community actors will bring to life the circuses, cup victories, riots, high rolling businessmen and fans that make up the club, its history and our city.
The show is at The New Bradford Playhouse 7:30pm on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th June. Tickets cost £3 and are available from here and on the door.

Belgian Blog - Day Two

Glorious sunshine greeted the second day of the bantamspast trip to the battlefields of the Great War. In the morning we left a football, used in the warm up at Wembley this year, at the site of the 1914 Christmas Day truce when British and German troops played football in no man's land. The site is marked by a wooden cross where visitors regularly leave footballs. Bradford City chairman Mark Lawn kindly supplied a ball and he wrote a message of remembrance from all at Valley Parade.

The day was to be dominated by thoughts of City's captain and goal scorer in the 1911 FA Cup Final Jimmy Speirs. A chance meeting at the site of one of the huge British mines exploded on the Messines Ridge with a group of Scottish doctors, who were undertaking a cycling tour of the Ypres area, gave us an insight into the fate of Jimmy Speirs. One of the doctors had written a book entitled 'War Surgery 1914-1918' examining the treatment of wounds during the conflict. Jimmy Speirs was shot through the thigh during the Battle of Passchendaele. The doctor explained that he would have suffered a broken femur. By 1917 the rapid strapping of such wounds, using a specially developed strap, vastly improved survival rates. However, it had to be applied almost immediately and as Jimmy was shot advancing across an open field it is probable that such a procedure was unlikely. His fate was probably sealed the moment he was shot. The muddy shell hole he was placed in lessened even further the chances of survival as infection was probable. In the end Jimmy was left in the shelter of the shell hole as his company continued their advance. The intention was to return, but sadly they were unable to and Jimmy was never seen alive again. In all probability he died an agonising and lonely death.

In the afternoon we visited the exact spot where he died, The two farms, named Iberian and Gallipoli by the British troops, from where the German's opened fire on Jimmy's company are still in existence - although they were probably rebuilt after the war. The open field over which Jimmy advanced offered little cover. We looked across the windy farmer's field where our great cup winner met his untimely end, it was difficult to visualise how it would have looked during the war. Appropriately we ended our trip at the graveside of Jimmy Speirs. Once again Bradford remembered.

Blog from Belgium - Day One

The annual bantamspast trip to the battlefields of the Great War is this year concentrating on the Ypres Salient in Belgium. Scene of some of the most bloody fighting of the conflict, Ypres became the final resting place of Bradford City's FA Cup winning captain and goalscorer Jimmy Speirs and the man-of-the-match in the replayed final Robert Torrance.

The first day commenced in drizzly conditions at Essex Farm Cemetery where John McCrae wrote the famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' whilst serving with the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Adjacent to the cemetery is the large obelisk memorial to the 49th West Riding Division. The division included the Belle Vue based 1/6th West Yorkshire Regiment. Among their casualties was City reserve Ernest Goodwin. Part of the divisional artillery was the 2nd West Riding Royal Field Artillery. They were based at the Valley Parade Drill Hall. When they mustered to depart for France at the start of the war it is reported that they used the Valley Parade pitch to store their guns and horses.

We moved on from Essex Farm to visit several cemeteries. The highlight was Lijssenhoek, which is the second largest British war cemetery in the world with some 9,901 burials. A highly informative visitor centre illustrates the work of the adjacent casualty clearing station which treated 300,000 injured soldiers.

After lunch and in increasingly glorious sunshine we searched for the site of the location where Robert Torrance was mortally wounded. Sadly he has no known grave. However, just across the fields from where the action took place where Torrance lost an arm and later died, is Klien Vierstraat British Cemetery. It is the home of bodies discovered after the war and if Robert does have a grave he is likely to be among the 109 that are marked 'A Solider of the Great War, known unto God'.

We continued the unforgettable day at the famous locations of Sanctuary Wood and Hill 60. Tomorrow we will seek out the location where Jimmy Speirs met his untimely end. Find out if we were successful when the blog is published tomorrow night.

Latest News from bantamspast

How to reflect such an unforgettable season? That will be the task in hand for the small bantamspast team this summer. We are delighted to have been invited to work closely with Mark Lawn to produce a new 2013 Suite at Valley Parade. Although we are at a very early stage of developing ideas, the overall vision is an exciting one and we hope we will produce something that will capture the magic of this remarkable season and its historical context. As the project progresses we will post further details, but with a major Cup Final and a Play-Off Final victory to reflect on, we are not short of content and artefacts – including a large shiny trophy.

On Thursday 30 May the annual bantamspast trip to the battlefields of the Great War gets underway. This year the focus is Belgium and in particular the infamous Ypres Salient. Several City players met their deaths near the Belgian town. The FA Cup captain and goal scorer Jimmy Speirs was killed during the terrible Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. We are planning to visit the location where he was killed and of course his final resting place. The man of the match in the FA Cup Final replay Robert Torrance was blasted into oblivion in 1918 and his body was never found. We will remember him at the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing where his name is inscribed. At nearby Poperinghe is the grave of City’s amateur centre half Gerald Kirk. He was killed in the wake of the first use of poison gas in warfare in 1915. Leading his company in a counter attack trying desperately, and successfully, to defend a gap in the Allied lines. The Dalesman paid with his life. The centre half who replaced Gerald in the Bantams’ team was James Comrie. Another man with no known grave his name is inscribed among the 56,000 of the Menin Gate at Ypres. Of course, this terrible litany is only a tiny fraction of the huge losses suffered at Ypres. Many of the people on the trip will be bringing stories of their own family’s loss with them, as well as that of the wider City of Bradford. If it proves practicable David Pendleton will provide a daily blog of the trip which takes place between Thursday 30 May and Sunday 2 June.

We are also collaborating with the Bradford based theatre company Northern Lines in the writing of their production ‘City Stories: It’s Only the Cup. War, Love and Football’, which will be staged at the New Bradford Playhouse, Little Germany, 27/28 June.

Finally, we will be adding around a dozen new framed images to the displays in our museum in exile at Bantams Bar on the Kop. At the moment admission is only available to holders of Bantams Bar season tickets and individual match day tickets. However, we have also added a couple of new images to our museum in exile display at the Corn Dolly public house on Bolton Road in the city centre. Admission is open to all – for the price of a pint!