NO TIC TO QUEEN VIC
a Walk around Far Headingley
David Hall
Numbers in bold refer to the photographs in the gallery.
The walk begins at the New Inn where some effort is immediately required to ignore the traffic on Otley Road and imagine the scene some 200 years ago.
In the last years of King George IV’s reign, following Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, war weary Britain returned to peace and relative prosperity. Industrial manufacturing gathered pace and Britain’s emerging industrialised towns became crowded and polluted. By the 1830s, cholera outbreaks were claiming many lives and the River Aire through Leeds was so filthy that a mid-nineteenth century poet rhymed:
“The air above with lurid smoke is crammed,
The Aire below is double dyed and damned.”
Headingley, on the other hand, was a small village thoroughly in the countryside on the road to Adel and Moor Grange. Traffic to Otley mainly followed the Otley Old Road avoiding Headingley. It would not be until the 1840s that an improved, less steep turnpike road through Bramhope connected Otley directly to the Headingly Lane.
North of Headingley was an area of common land known as Headingley Moor where people grazed livestock, collected wood and where some encroachment cottages already stood. Here the lane from Adel joined the Headingley Lane. The Weetwood Estate lay beyond Headingley Moor, and to the west was John Marshall’s extensive New Grange Estate, part of which survives as Beckett Park.
Pressure for building land and the Government’s need for revenue led to the sale of common land across the country and in 1829 the Headingley Moor Inclosure Act was passed by Parliament, allowing for the laying out of two new roads across the Moor, Cottage Road and Moor Road, and the creation of building plots for sale at public auction 01
By 1832 blacksmith John Askey had built a forge and inn, The Horse Shoes Inn, at the fork in the road to Adel and during the next ten years much of what we see in the Moor Road/Cottage Road/Otley Road triangle was rapidly built upon, forming the nucleus of today’s conservation area, originally Headingley Moor village which became Far Headingley in 1868 on completion of St Chad’s Church and the creation of the new parish.
Just here, Joseph Coates, a farmer, established a ‘new’ inn when he began to brew and sell beer from these premises. The New Inn was established by 1841 according to the census of that year. All who enter the New Inn today should note the curious ‘no tic’ clock above the entrance, a hint to all who enter there’s no beer on credit, although there might be an opportunity to seek indulgencies as to closing time 02-03
Continue down Cottage Road to the cinema.
Cottage Road Cinema opened in 1912. It celebrated 100 years of continuous film shows in 2012 and received a Civic Trust blue plaque to mark the occasion. It is one of the longest surviving cinemas in the country 03-04
The building was originally a garage block owned by Mr John Kirk of Castle Grove, a Leeds businessman, philanthropist and motor enthusiast. John Kirk died in 1908 and the property was taken over by Owen Brooks as a garage and motorcycle assembly shop. Brooks was also something of a pioneer in the film industry, having built the movie camera and projector first used in 1901 in the Tivoli Theatre in Leeds, on which his own news reel films were shown. In 1912 he was joined in partnership by Reginald Smith and the pair converted the building into the Headingley Picture House where the early silent films were accompanied by a three-piece orchestra.
A few yards further on we reach the junction with Heathfield Terrace where the newly built apartments occupy a parcel of land formerly the cinema car park.
The boundaries mark the extent of a typical plot auctioned at the Original Oak in 1831, when land was released for sale following the Inclosure Act. Buildings of various sizes and styles, all built of local Meanwood stone, quickly arose on their respective sites. On this plot, before becoming the cinema car park, there were two small cottages and Mrs Moxon’s wash house, a large building which one contemporary described as being “full of noise and steam from women with clogs on, all slopping about in soapy water whilst chickens and hens clucked outside in the yard”.
Some of the plots were bought by local tradesmen for investment and many still carry the names of the original purchasers. William Oddy, a local cowkeeper, owned 14 houses, still known as Oddy Place (which we pass later 06). William Scott, a local butcher owned 4 houses, known as Scott’s Buildings, off the public track near to where you’re standing, and off Moor Road you’ll spot Ellis Terrace [Listed Buildings] and Smith’s Cottages.
It wasn’t until improvements were made to the Headingley Lane and the horse tram service was extended to The Three Horse Shoes in 1838 that the area became attractive to the Leeds gentry.
Continue walking to the Moor Road junction and cross the road to the far side.
Moor Road crossed Headingley Moor as an ancient track. It was made into a proper road 30ft wide in the 1830s as a result of the Inclosure Act. From Cottage Road to Shaw Lane it was widened to 50ft in the 1930s, when the Moor Park estate was built on the former grounds of Moor House. It is a long-held road safety and conservation aspiration of the local community to reinstate this section back to the original carriageway width by widening the pavements and tree planting. In the other direction, the road continues in a straight line towards Weetwood Lane with a few unexpected bends at the far end. It’s reputed that the winding bit of road originated from the tracks made by sheep being driven onto the common. You’ll find a cottage named the Drovers Cottage fronting Moor Road in rustic acknowledgement of this somewhat speculative theory.
The large building plots between Moor Road and Meanwood Ridge were taken up by wealthy businessmen for larger houses, particularly after the improvements to the Headingley Lane and the extension of the public omnibus services from Leeds to Headingley Moor.
Smaller houses were on the other side – many affluent enough to have their own coach house and stable, others having a stable for their horse and renting a coach or cart when they needed it from Mr Dykes’ carriage business at the end of Moor Road on the site of the present YEB substation.
Moor House was built in the 1830s and owned by the Tetley family. It was sold in 1899, pulled down and became the site of the Moor Park housing estate just after the First World War.
Where you are standing now was the entrance to Mr Holmes’ Castle Grove property. It was gated at this location, where a gatehouse stood guarding a private driveway, which curved round to the entrance to Castle Grove. The curving driveway remains but now serves the adjoining property.
Castle Grove [Listed Building] remained a large private house and grounds until it was sold in 1934. In that year the Masonic Hall Company acquired the house and a builder bought the gardens for house building. At that time, Castle Grove Drive was built, the gatehouse was demolished and the former driveway became separated from the main house.
Continue up Castle Grove Drive to Castle Grove House.
Samuel Holmes was a linen merchant living in Park Lane in Leeds. He was one of the biggest investors in Headingley Moor when land was first released for sale following the Inclosure Act. Between 1831 and 1834 he built Castle Grove - but it was not as grand as the building you now see. It was a pleasant plain-fronted gentleman’s residence. He lived here for thirty years and died in 1865. The house and grounds were then sold to Joseph Conyers, a leather factor. That’s when things started to happen to Castle Grove 05
To understand the progression of change, you have to deconstruct what’s here and reduce the property to Samuel Holmes’ original house, the frontage of which included the entrance, no porch, the two side rooms, no bays and the three windows above.
Joseph Conyers added the large porch and the bay windows. He also constructed two wings on either side, set back from the frontage, a new stable block and extensive greenhouses.
The next major changes came in 1894 when John Kirk, chairman of Samuel Kirk and Sons, dyers and finishers, bought the property for £8,000. He set about transforming Castle Grove into an opulent villa. He added a dome to the roof and created an exclusive salon behind Samuel Holmes’ original drawing rooms. The salon has marble columns supporting an arcaded first floor gallery, approached by a grand staircase below the roof dome. It was a social statement designed to impress and, if proof were needed, glowingly reviewed in The Architect in 1896.
When John Kirk died in 1908, the house proved difficult to sell, there being little demand by that time for houses in Far Headingley requiring a large retinue of servants. A Leeds surgeon, Edward Bain, bought the house in 1920 and lived here for the next 10 years. Then in the 1930s, the grounds were sold for estate housing and Castle Grove was acquired by the Masonic Hall Company.
Other large villas do survive in Far Headingley, some divided into flats. Three make up the site of Tetley Hall, which was a University Hall of Residence situated on the other side of Tetley Hall, named after Colonel Tetley, a former pro-chancellor of Leeds University. Other fine villas nearby include Shaw Grange, Shaw House and Albert House [all Listed Buildings], still serving as large family houses.
These great houses are a reminder of the extremes of wealth in Victorian Leeds. Financial ease and financial hardship were neighbours. Servants and tradesmen lived in small cottages and worked for owners of mansion houses like Castle Grove.
Now walk back to Moor Road and continue towards Weetwood Lane, pausing at Keightley’s Garage.
We’re standing by the former Keightley’s Garage, now closed (on Oddy Place) 06 It was built in the 1880s for Richard Dalton, who had been the proprietor of the Weetwood Forge, situated next to the Three Horse Shoes. On this site however, Richard Dalton was able to build himself not only a new forge, but also a house and an ironmonger’s shop – wheelwright, farrier, mechanic, tool-maker, repairer and sharpener. Sooner or later you needed the services of Mr Dalton.
The Weslyan Mission Hall [Listed Building] Across the street, toward Weetwood Lane, is a little chapel built in 1860 with simple lancet windows and pointed arched doorway 07 Twenty one years earlier, the curate of Headingley church opened a small Anglican schoolhouse at the top of Hollin Lane. But this was a time of rising support for non-conforming churches. In 1845, Headingley Methodist Church opened on the Otley Road and a local Methodist leader, Tommy Waite, a shuttle and bobbin maker in Leeds, began to give improvement classes in the Anglican schoolhouse.
The curate at St Michael’s church grew increasingly concerned that these improvement classes were coming too close to preaching Methodism, and Tommy Waite was asked to hold his classes elsewhere. The result was the building of this little Wesleyan Mission Room in 1860. It seated 124 people.
Soon afterwards the Anglicans living in the hamlet of Headingley Moor started to campaign for a new church. They appealed to William Beckett of Beckett Park and he responded by gifting land on his estate on the other side of Otley Road, plus an endowment for St Chad’s Church, which opened in 1868, splitting the parish of Headingley into two and creating the new parish of Far Headingley.
Continue to Weetwood Lane, turn right and pause at the junction of Hollin Lane.
Diagonally across the staggered junction you will see Weetwood Primary School. It was built in 1891 as a home for waifs and strays and was the gift of Ernest Beckett in memory of his wife Lucy who died in childbirth. Orphaned and homeless children were housed and educated but they were also expected to work. In 1914, the children in the home made 13,611 pairs of socks for the British troops 08-09
Above the front door is the Beckett family crest carved in stone and at foundation level is a series of three poignant ceremonial stones laid by each of Lucy’s children including two-year-old Ralph (no doubt assisted by his father).
Immediately opposite are new blocks of retirement homes built in the 1990s, Orchard Court and St Chad’s Court. Prior to that it was the site of the Corporation bus garage, which itself had a number of transformations 10 In 1874 Leeds Tramway Company built Headingley Depot on the Otley Road frontage with stabling for 120 tramcar horses, which was later adapted and enlarged for steam powered trams, electric trams and, from the late 1950s, diesel buses. In addition to the stables and omnibus sheds, there were several rows of small terraced houses for tram workers. Mucking out the stables and caring for 120 horses must have been quite a job!
The two shops you are standing close to belong to the original Headingley Moor Church School dating from 1839 11-12 It was extended in 1872, and when the St Chad’s school moved to a new site on Otley Road in1891 (now Kindercare Nursery), the old building became a working men’s club, and subsequently two shops, with a studio work room to the rear and private house. It was here, shortly after the little Anglican school first opened, that Tommy Waite held his Improvement Classes which the Vicar feared Tommy might be using to promote Methodism.
Just down the road at 2 Hollin Lane is the one-time home of Cyril Ransome, father of Swallow and Amazons author Arthur Ransome 13 In 1879 Cyril Ransome moved to Leeds from Rugby school to take up a post at the Yorkshire College (now Leeds University). No sooner had he arrived when the government asked him to take in a former pupil.
The former pupil was an Abyssinian prince named Alamayou, who arrived in Britain as a seven-year-old orphan after British troops stormed his country’s Magdala in 1868. The raid was considered necessary in order to overpower his father King Theodore, and release British diplomatic hostages detained by Theodore in a Magdala jail.
It took nearly a year to mobilise a battalion of British troops stationed in India and reach Magdala. When the attack came, it was brief. To avoid capture Theodore shot himself. His wife, Queen Terunish, and the young prince were put on a boat to England, but the Queen died on the journey and Alamayou arrived, an orphan, under the dubious protection of the British Government. Fortunately, Queen Victoria took a matronly interest in the royal orphan. He was given a government allowance and put into the care of schoolmasters.
Alamayou came to Leeds in October 1879 to be with Cyril Ransome his former tutor. He was 18. Tragically, however, he became ill and died just a few short weeks after his arrival. Cyril Ransome explains in his diary that “by a foolish act” he caught a cold which developed into pneumonia. And the foolish act? He fell asleep on the toilet in the middle of the night. The toilet was not a nice centrally heated room next to the bathroom, it was a small stone-built water closet at the end of the garden. It was a cold November night. It seems Alamayou, unused to the damp air, got out of bed to respond to a call of nature, fell asleep, and literally caught his death of cold.
One last word on the British campaign to overpower King Theodore, which took almost a year to mobilise. Niall Ferguson does not mention Alamayou in his book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World but he does describe the logistics of reaching Magdala from the Indian sub-continent. “On board the flotilla that set sail from Bombay to Massowah on the Red Sea coast were: 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, 26,000 camp followers, 13,000 mules and ponies, an equal number of sheep, 7,000 camels, 7,000 bullocks, 1,000 donkeys, 44 elephants, plus a prefabricated harbour, complete with lighthouses and a railway system”. (The story of the British invasion and rescue (or capture) of Alamayou is told by Elizabeth Laird in her book The Prince Who Walked With Lions, published in 2012.)
After his death, Alamayou was taken to Windsor Castle for interment in the catacombs at St George’s Chapel at the request of Queen Victoria herself.
Walk back along Weetwood Lane, cross over Moor Road and pause in front of the YEB Electricity sub station 14
Across the road is the former Fisherman’s Wife Restaurant. In 1934 John Bryan opened Bryan’s Modern Fisheries here in stone-built premises, formerly Mrs Pickering’s grocery shop and cottage. The cottage was converted to a café with four tables on the ground floor, five tables on the first floor and one outside toilet. Very little changed for thirty years, but in 1963 John’s son Albert acquired two adjoining cottages, cleared the site and built a new take-away shop with adjacent restaurant seating 90 diners. In 2000, Bryan’s served 10,000 customers a week, and sold a half-million fish and 150 tons of potatoes in that year. The business was sold and rebranded in 2012 [it became Catch, and is now closed] 15
Adjacent to the fish restaurant are John Askey’s Three Horseshoes Inn, his private house 3 Weetwood Lane [Listed Building], and a fragment of his blacksmith’s forge and stables, most of which is now subsumed by Bryan’s car park. John Askey paid £136.10s for the site at auction and was in business here from 1832.
The name ‘The Three Horse Shoes’ is common to inns that used to be combined with a blacksmith’s forge. The superstition that the devil rode on horseback (or is himself cloven hooved) and might come in the middle of the night for a new set of shoes, gave rise to the blacksmith’s custom of keeping spare horseshoes in sets of three 16-17
Cross Weetwood Lane and continue to the public space in front of The Three Horse Shoes.
Glance back and notice the premises of Royale Dry Cleaning. It is an undistinguished house and shop at the end of an Edwardian brick terrace fronting Park Road 17-18 For many years this was the home of Mr and Mrs Walter Bennett. Mr Bennett ran a local butcher’s business from the shop. They moved here from Armley in 1948 when their only son Alan was12. Alan Bennett was sent to Leeds Modern School in Lawnswood. In 1957 he left Far Headingley for Oxford University and, as we all know, a spectacularly successful writing career.
Cross Otley Road at the pedestrian crossing and head towards St Chad’s Church, passing on the way the Orchard Garden with its war memorial [Listed Building] in Guiseley stone.
St Chad’s Church [Listed Building] As noted, the church grounds belonged to William Beckett and were gifted by him before his death in 1863. In those days the entire length of Otley Road on the west side, from St Anne’s Lane to West Park, was within the Beckett Estate. It was mostly farmland with an impressive private park surrounding the mansion house (now part of Leeds Beckett University), from which a long drive swept down to the main gates at Otley Road. The gates were moved to the new entrance to Beckett’s Park in the early twentieth century, but the gatehouse still stands at the corner of St Chad’s Avenue.
As you walk up the church drive the parish centre is on your right. In 1965 it replaced the original vicarage, a large and rambling former farmhouse, also part of the Beckett endowment, following completion of the church in 1868 19
The church itself is built in a gothic revival style on a north-south axis, giving it a commanding position and allowing the sun to pour through the great ‘east’ window during mid morning services 20-22 The local architect, commissioned to oversee the building work, was William Crossland, renowned for Rochdale Town Hall and his later masterpiece, the Founders Building at Royal Holloway University, Windsor, described by Bill Bryson as “a kind of English Versailles. One of the grandest buildings anywhere on the planet in the nineteenth century and it still staggers at first sight” (Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling, published 2015).
St Chad’s Church was endowed by the Beckett family under the supervision, but mostly interference, of Sir Edmund Beckett Denison, by all accounts a very overbearing man who was a lawyer by training but who took an interest in architecture and clock design. He famously designed the clock which chimes on Big Ben at Westminster (Big Ben being the bell, not the clock). You should not be surprised therefore to hear the Westminster chimes coming from St Chad’s clock on the hour. Sir Edmund is also credited with suggesting to Crossland the design of the building.
In 2010 the church was closed for re-ordering. The Victorian furnishings – pews and pulpit – were removed and the interior was refitted with modern seating, a nave altar and glass screen partitioning. It was also redecorated and generally spruced up. The work cost over £600k and it’s worth a look inside if you have the opportunity.
Follow the path through the churchyard to the rear of the building and exit through the iron gate into the wooded grounds of Leeds Beckett University.
There are several graves of local interest, including Sir Nathan Bodington, the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds (near the west end), and John Askey, the Innkeeper (near the exit gate).
Continue through the university grounds to The Acre, Leeds Beckett University, the grass square forming the centrepiece of the university campus 23
The James Graham Building [Listed Building] completed in 1912 faces the open square. Handsomely designed in the Neo-Georgian-Palladian style by Leeds architect G W Atkinson, it has many decorative features and an imposing central portico surmounted by four Corinthian pillars below a classic pediment 24 James Graham was Director of Education in Leeds until 1931, a promoter of secondary education and a driving force behind the establishment of a Teacher Training College at Beckett Park.
Flanking two sides of the Acre are Atkinson’s elegant teaching blocks also in the Neo-Georgian Style [all Listed Buildings].
Immediately to the left hand side is Kirkstall Grange, now simply called The Grange [Listed Building], the Beckett family home until 1908 25 There has been a house on this site since the sixteenth century, following the Dissolution and sale of land belonging to Kirkstall Abbey. Thomas and Joanna Foxcroft moved here in 1569 and purchased the estate in1583. In 1596 it was sold to Anthony Wade of Halifax and the Wade family made it their home for the next 200 years. The original house was rebuilt in 1626 by Benjamin Wade, and rebuilt again in 1752 by Walter Wade. From 1795 the house was tenanted, and in 1829 it was sold with its 450 acres to William Beckett for £37,000.
In 1858, William Beckett, Member of Parliament and director of Beckett’s Bank, undertook a number of alterations to the house in anticipation of the Queen’s visit to Leeds for the opening on the Town Hall. It seems there was some competition for the honour of hosting the royal party during the visit and William was clearly determined to impress. The house was enlarged and refinements were made. Stone bay windows were added, and a glazed entrance porch with Corinthian pillars below a ceremonial balcony incorporating the Beckett coat of arms above. A large extension was added on the west side.
The house still enjoys commanding south-facing views over Mr Beckett’s park, and a short walk through woodland to the west side once lead to a spectacular viewing point across the Aire Valley, in which lay the then romanticised ruins of Kirkstall Abbey. Today, the not-so-romantic view is obstructed by trees but a memorial arch, built to commemorate the Queen’s visit, still marks the intended viewing point and is the next landmark on our walk.
Follow the signs to Queen’s Walk and continue to the Memorial Arch.
Queen Victoria’s Memorial Arch [Listed Building] stands on a stone base having four stone columns with volute capitals. Lettered tiles across the entablature read: “To commemorate the visit of Queen Victoria for the inauguration of the Town Hall at Leeds. 7 September 1858” 26-27
There is no record of the Queen visiting this spot and it is unlikely that she came to The Grange at all, since we know that during her visit to Leeds she was the guest of the Mayor of Leeds, Peter Fairburn, and stayed at his residence Woodsley House in Clarendon Road. No doubt a severe and costly disappointment to William Beckett.
There were however other notable guests at The Grange during the Beckett years, including Lord Palmerston in 1860, Oscar Wilde 1883 and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour 1905.
To return to the New Inn retrace your steps to The Acre and continue along the road adjacent to the public park. You’ll pass through the gates, moved from their original location on Otley Road in the mid 1930s. The road ahead, St Chad’s Drive, broadly follows the old coach road from Mr Beckett’s mansion house. When you reach Otley Road you’ll see the old gatehouse [Listed Building] on your left 28 Turn left. The New Inn is across the road nearby.
You’ve now travelled from ‘No Tic’ at the New Inn to ‘Queen Vic’ at the Memorial Arch and back 29 I hope you’ve enjoyed your walk looking at some of our local historical landmarks along the way.
David Hall, January 2018
