Bradford City Hall: Oliver & Jane

Bradford Town Hall is probably the best building in the city. Carved around its walls are statues of English kings and regnal queens. These royal figures stare down somewhat imperiously, while adding some additional splendour to an already fine construction. Included among their ranks is the great Oliver Cromwell, the only one to have rejected an offer of the crown. Quite what Charles I and II would have thought, having the Lord Protector stand between them, I can only imagine. Yet as head of state during our brief, puritan republic, he is rightly afforded a place (below).

Curiously, Queen Jane Dudley who suceeded King Edward VI in July, 1553, for nine days, is omitted. Bloody Mary stands next to godly Edward (below); their respective sets of spiritual DNA could not be more different from their biological. Whereas the liberal manufacturers and aldermen of high Victorian Bradford wished to assert their principles by including Cromwell, they must have thought a queen of only nine days’ reign not worth the additional expense, or space, on their temple of civic pride.

Whether our lives be brief or lengthy, and whether our origins are pious or profane, there is room for us in the halls and mansions of heaven. There are aborted and miscarried children who find a place in the palace, while great ones of earth are sent away; there are Scythians and barbarians accounted heirs of Abraham while his physical descendants find closed the doors if Christ they refuse. Said Mary in her song of Luke’s Gospel, chapter 1:

He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. (vv51-53)

There was no room for little Jane at Bradford, but space aplenty in heaven.