WATCH: Jacob's Well demolition four years on

That's right, exactly four years ago on Friday, back in 2019, the iconic and much-maligned building in the centre of Bradford was blown to the ground.

In that time Covid-19 became a thing - infiltrating our lives and taking in a global pandemic - Bradford was announced City of Culture 2025 and work has begun on the office block, One City Park.

Jacob's Well, which was situated off Manchester Road, was built in the 1970s and its architecture firmly associated it with that era.

The building used to house Bradford Council but had been empty since 2016 before it was demolished.

Contractors used 500 explosive charges to wipe the structure from the city's skyline and the Telegraph & Argus captured slow-motion footage as it fell to the ground.

The T&A also pulled together a gallery of 28 photos from the demolition day.

The charges were set off at noon on Sunday, February 17, 2019, despite last-minute complications.

The date had been rumoured on social media for some time, but the T&A respected Bradford Council's decision not to publicise it in advance for safety and security reasons.

In a uniquely Bradfordian twist, the plans were thrown behind schedule as contractors had to wait for police to release the scene of a serious car crash outside the building.

Widespread road closures remained in place for much of the afternoon.

Within seconds, Jacob's Well was no more

The site played a vital role during the pandemic, with the Jacob's Well car park transforming into a vaccination centre, including the installation of numerous portable buildings.

This closed in August last year and in October, 2022 a meeting of Bradford Council heard the 120-space Jacobs Well car park was soon to re-open, in response to concerns about the demolition of the Kirkgate Centre and NCP car park off Hall Ings.

Councillor Debbie Davies (Cons, Baildon) asked Council bosses: “How the demolition of the NCP site and the Kirkgate Centre, which combined will result in the loss of over 1,000 car parking spaces in the city centre, will attract inward investment opportunities and also visitor footfall for shopping and leisure purposes, particularly after the opening of Bradford Live which has a capacity of over 4,000 people?”

That same week the temporary buildings were to be hoisted off the site to prepare for the car park’s re-opening in November.

Jacob's Well car park in February 2020 (left) and the same site last October (right) (Image: Telegraph & Argus)

A vision was put in place before this to turn the site into a £20 million “public sector hub”, with the aim of bringing together organisations like the Council, police, government and health services.

It was hailed as one of the biggest Bradford regeneration projects and the original plan was for the works to be privately-funded and the building to open in 2018.

But a spokesperson for Bradford Council said in February 2020 the appetite for such buildings had “cooled" and the vision never came to fruition.

This was in response to the T&A querying why an update on the project had been absent from the Regeneration and Environment Scrutiny Committee meeting that month, despite other schemes - such as One City Park - being mentioned.

An artist's impression of the £20 million public sector hub that plans were put forward for (Image: Other)

Shelagh O'Neill, Assistant Director - Economy and Development, said when asked about Jacob's Well that the Council had struggled to secure the volume of occupiers needed to move the scheme forward, something which was already touted as a concern in 2017.

Bradford Council told the T&A at the time that the site still has "huge potential."