Just what you find on Back Pool Fold

Now it is one of those things about many of our Victorian and Edwardian buildings that the architects paid some attention to the back of the places they were designing as well as the front.

Even though they were possibly seen by far fewer people and I guess less important ones there was still a nod to form and style.

That said the few times I wandered down Back Pool Fold I totally missed the back entrance to this building which fronts Chapel Walks.

And for those still not quite sure where we are Chapel Walks runs down from Brown Street to Cross Street where the old nonconformist chapel stood and that corner with Back Pool Fold is also home to Sam’s Chop House which alternates with Mr Thomas’s as one of the places we take my sisters to when they are up from London..

The building on the other corner is also a restaurant but has undergone a name change over the last few years.

In June it was Tango,s Bar and Grill, and back in 2012 was Bacchanalia and beyond 2008 I have no memory of what it was or for that matter when it first was converted into an eating place.

In 1911 when it was still listed as the Union Building it was home to number of businesses ranging from Garrick and Brockbank, metal merchants to the Union Assurance Society Limited and the Guardian Plate Glass Insurance Company.

And had I wandered down Back Pool Fold I would have across a number of other businesses from merchants, printers and even the Stock Exchange Restaurant to ponder on what Miss H L Rowntree did.

She was listed at no 3 Back Pool Fold but sadly there is no detail.

All of which brings me back to Andy Robertson’s two pictures and how the care and detail of the architect of the Union Building has been mangled by the air con machine and the bricked up entrance.

Of course this may not have been the backdoor, and given the number of other people doing business on Back Pool Fold it may have had its share of visitors going through the entrance underneath that inscription.

Not any more.

In time I will wander back down Back Pool Fold if only to see what else has been messed about.

Pictures; Back Pool Fold, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson