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PUTTING THE ‘BAT' BACK INTO BATLEY |
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Before and After
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This distinctive bat has been perched on its arch (left) since Victorian times (opposite Batley Railway Station). The bat's place in Batley is not new, but had been forgotten. Nobody is certain as to how Batley got it's name, but the bat's theme, intended as a pun on the town's name, has now been reinstated in the ‘Batley Bats' sculpture. The style of the piece was directly influenced by the Victorian listed buildings that surround the site. Batley became prosperous partly through the ‘shoddy' industry in the early nineteenth century (shoddy was a cheap rough fabric made from recycled woollen rags, which was exported for a variety of uses, such as military uniforms, for opposing armies fighting in the Crimean war and for American slaves' blankets). The elaborate Gothic animal carvings decorate the cloth exchange houses, which were built to sell the shoddy (above) It was a combination of the local ‘linen fold' design (above), taken from furniture displayed at the neighbouring Oakwell Hall, and the image of the folded shoddy slaves' blankets, that inspired the ‘shoddyfold' design for the sculpture. The shoddyfold detail is the folded fabric design in terracotta, just below each of the three arches. The four small buildings with pyramidal roofs represent French Gothic revival industrial architecture, designed by the local 19thC architects Hanstock and Sheard. |
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