started, as suggested by such facts as its support from influential lobbyists from the outset, and the foundation walls being enlarged prematurely so that one could be added. Charles Barry too had suggested a cupola or small tower in early stages, to divert attention from an arched glazed roof which showed above the parapet. A firm named Addy and Nicholls was appointed contractors for the tower and interior work. The tower was not completed until after the Town Hall's official opening, with a bell cast by John Warner & Sons hung in 1860, closely followed by the clock mechanism, installed by Dent of London (the dials designed by Edmund Beckett Denison, installed by Potts) one storey above the bell. The grand entrance hall originally envisaged, with a screen of columns leading to the great hall, had to be abandoned in favour of a cramped vestibule to support the tower above, but this was considered a worthy price for the extra drama and power a tower would provide. The film-maker Jonathan Meades reflected that the "symbolic, representative function of Leeds Town Hall increased during the period of its gestation and construction. In Brodrick’s earlier scheme, the only thing that rose above its uninflected parapet was a low storey reminiscent of a theatre’s fly tower in the centre. A magnificently sullen, passive building was transformed into a magnificently sullen, aggressive one, at the behest of the hall's promoters". Later changes Further modifications to the Town Hall continued to be made after its opening, beginning with the entrance steps being changed in part to semi-circular in the 1860s, Brodrick suggesting in 1867 that a larger skylight be put in each of the courts, and then, later in the same year, the placing of the four sculpted lions along the south front. Brodrick's final touches to the Town Hall, the lions are the work of William Day Keyworth Jr of Hull, and each is made from two pieces of Portland stone with zig-zag joints. Evidence of Brodrick's early interest in lion sculptures is documented in travel sketches from his European tour, at San Lorenzo Cathedral and the Palazzo dell'Università in Genoa, and the monument to Clement XIII in St Peter's, Rome. Inside the Victoria Hall, a gallery was added in 1874 and then replaced in 1890 by the current design by William Henry Thorp (1852–1944); there was also an 1894 redecoration of the Victoria