Bradford Industrial Museum

Like the North East’s Beamish Open Air Museum, the city of Bradford boasts a smaller, though still interesting, industrial museum. Unlike its larger colleague, it is free to enter. A few Victorian terraces have been appropriately furnished, vintage cars are neatly parked awaiting inspection and a few old shopfronts offer a taste of life in the ‘good old days’. As someone who is thoroughly sickened by the state of Great Britain in the 2020s, hankering for better, greater times comes all too easily.

Also displayed at the museum are gigantic machines used in the days when we actually made things and did not just import it all from China. Although good news for our economy, which was then the greatest in the world, these objects belonged in giant mills and factories which offered long, hard days along with aching backs, sore hands and deafened ears.

The present is pretty awful and a moral quagmire, with its closing and compromised churches, the threats of war and the possibility of economic decline. Yet in one respect, it is business as usual. Fallen worlds do not really have golden ages; the fashions might change and the badness might vary in extent, but the best times always lay ahead: King Jesus is coming back, so look ahead and look up, not down or back. 

And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. Revelation 5:10

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