The View from the Car Park

Wakefield from the Ridings Centre car park

My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?

  • To the south, to what Lawrence Butler called the ‘upturned pudding-basin’ of Sandal Castle motte?
  • To the south-west to the Emley Moor transmitter on the edge of the South Pennines?
  • Or looking back across the precinct towards the peregrine eyrie on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral?

Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.

In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.