Arguably Keighley's most impressive Victorian building, the Mechanics' Institute dominates this pre-war view of North Street and the top of Cavendish Street.

Designed by the famous partnership of Bradford architects Henry Francis Lockwood and William Mawson, this had officially opened in 1870 to house the School of Science and Art, the Trade and Grammar School and a Municipal Hall.

The clock was added to its tower in 1892.

The Mechanics' Institute was a centre of social and cultural life.

A notice-board visible here on its Cavendish Street side would be advertising the popular Saturday night dances which were to prove the unwitting cause of its downfall, for it was after such a dance early in 1962 that much of the building was burned out.

The fine clock-tower survived for several more years, providing a focal-point and telling the time clearly in all four directions until - in surely a display of gross unimaginativeness -- it was demolished to make way for a bland corner of Keighley College.

Notice the forerunner of crossing-lights in the Belisha beacons, amber globes atop black-and-white poles named after l930s Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha.

The photograph was supplied by Michael Shearing, of High Spring Gardens Lane, Keighley.