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Leeds
Historical and geographical information
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Introduction
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Headlines of the history of the Leeds
are in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Contextual history is in purple.
This webpage about the Coatham has the following
section headings:
- The
Farndales of Leeds
- Leeds,
an overview
- Timeline
of Leeds
- Barkston Ash
- Links, texts and
books
The Farndales of Leeds
The Leeds 1 Line were the descendants of
John Farndale (FAR00293)
who married Sarah Brittain in Leeds in 1856 and was a cordwainer in the
Bramley, Hunslet area of Leeds by 1861. A cordwainer is a
shoemaker who makes new shoes from new leather. The cordwainer's trade has been
distinguished from the cobbler's trade, according to a tradition in Britain
that restricted cobblers to repairing shoes. That said, the word cobbler has
become widely used for folk who make or repair shoes The Oxford English
Dictionary says that the word cordwainer is archaic, "still used in the
names of guilds, for example, the Cordwainers' Company"; but its
definition of cobbler mentions only mending, reflecting the older distinction.
The family lived in the Bramley and Hunslet areas of
Leeds. They worked variously as shoemakers, cart men, labourers, and rag metal
dealers and Joseph and Alfred Farndale both served in the Army in the First
World War.
The Leeds 2 Line were the descendants of
Charles Farndale (FAR00738)
who settled in Leeds in 1947 after he married Lilian Atack.
Norman Farndale (FAR00782) had moved
to Barkston Ash by 1948. His older sister Lillie
Farndale (FAR00752B)
died in a tragic accident in Leeds in 1933. Elieen Farndale (FAR00914)
was married at Barkston Ash in 1973. William Farndale
(FAR00651) eventually
settled in Leeds with his son Cyril Farndale (FAR00872) who
moved to Leeds after the Second World War.
Leeds
Leeds is a city in West
Yorkshire about 170 miles north of central London.
Leeds was a small manorial
borough in the 13th century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it
became a major centre for the production and trading of wool. In
the Industrial Revolution it became a major mill town. Wool was
still the dominant industry, but flax, engineering, iron foundries,
printing, and other industries were also important.
From being a market town
in the valley of the River Aire in the 16th
century, Leeds expanded and absorbed the surrounding villages to become a
populous urban centre by the mid-twentieth century. It now lies within
the West Yorkshire Urban Area, the United Kingdom's fourth-most populous
urban area, with a population of 2.6 million.
Leeds Timeline
Anglo Saxon
Leeds originated as an Anglo-Saxon
township on the north bank of the Aire.
1086
By the time of the Domesday Book Leeds
had a population of around 200, which was comparatively large.
1207
The Lord of the Manor, Maurice De Gant,
founded a new town at Leeds. He created a new street of houses west of the
existing village and he divided the land into plots for building. Then craftsmen built houses and paid rent. The new street was
called Brigg Gata (gata
is an old word for a street and brigg is an old word for a bridge so it
was the bridge street). Soon the town of Leeds was flourishing. In Medieval
Leeds, there were butchers, bakers, carpenters, and blacksmiths.
1552
A grammar school was founded in Leeds.
1626
Leeds grew as a local market centre and
was incorporated in 1626. By then the town was a cloth-finishing centre for a
wide area where domestic weaving, introduced by 14th-century Flemish weavers,
was pursued. By the 16th century Leeds was able to challenge the supremacy of
York and Beverley in the woolen-manufacturing trade.
1801
In 1801, 42% of the
population of Leeds lived outside the township, in the wider borough. The
population of Leeds had reached 30,000.
Residential growth
occurred in Holbeck and Hunslet from 1801 to 1851,
but, as these townships became industrialised new areas were favoured for
middle class housing. Land south of the river was developed primarily for
industry and secondarily for back-to-back workers' dwellings.
1816
The completion in 1816 of
the Leeds and Liverpool Canal stimulated Leeds’s growth.
1832
Cholera outbreaks in
1832 and 1849 caused the authorities to address the problems of drainage,
sanitation, and water supply. Water was pumped from the River
Wharfe, but by 1860 it was too heavily polluted to be usable.
1834
Leeds was connected to
Selby by railway. Then in
1839, it was connected to York. In 1848 it was connected to Derby.
1836
The first modern police
force was formed.
1851
The population of Leeds reached
101,000.
When pollution became a
problem, the wealthier residents left the industrial conurbation to live in Headingley, Potternewton and
Chapel Allerton which led to a 50% increase in the population of Headingley and Burley from 1851 to 1861. The middle-class
flight from the industrial areas led to development beyond the borough at
Roundhay and Adel. The introduction of the electric tramway led
to intensification of development in Headingley and Potternewton and expansion outside the borough into
Roundhay.
1857
1858
Holbeck and Leeds formed a
continuous built-up area by 1858, with Hunslet nearly
meeting them. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, population
growth in Hunslet, Armley, and Wortley outstripped
that of Leeds.
1864
Leeds United was founded.
1866
The Leeds Improvement Act
1866 sought to improve the quality of working class
housing by restricting the number of homes that could be built in a single
terrace.
1867
Following the Leeds
Waterworks Act of 1867 three reservoirs were built at Lindley Wood, Swinsty, and Fewston in the Washburn Valley north of Leeds.
1870
Two private gas supply
companies were taken over by the corporation in 1870, and the municipal supply
provided street lighting and cheaper gas to homes.
1880
From the early 1880s, the
Yorkshire House-to-House Electricity Company supplied electricity to Leeds
until it was purchased by Leeds Corporation and became a municipal supply.
1893
In 1893 Leeds had been
granted city status.
The industries that
developed in the industrial revolution had included making machinery for
spinning, machine tools, steam engines and gears as well as other industries
based on textiles, chemicals and leather and pottery.
Coal was extracted on a
large scale and the still functioning Middleton Railway, the first
successful commercial steam locomotive railway in the world,
transported coal into the centre of Leeds. The track was the first rack railway and the locomotive (Salamanca) was the first to
have twin cylinders.
Various areas in Leeds
developed different roles in the industrial revolution. The city
centre became a major centre of transport and commerce, Hunslet and Holbeck became major engineering
centres. Armley, Bramley and Kirkstall became milling
centres and areas such as Roundhay became middle class suburbs, the
building of the Leeds Tramway allowing them better connections with
the rest of the city.
1900
Leeds in 1900
1930
Slum clearance and
rebuilding began in Leeds during the interwar period when over 18,000
houses were built by the council on 24 estates in Cross Gates, Middleton,
Gipton, Belle Isle and Halton Moor.
Barkston Ash
To the east of Leeds is Barkston Ash.
The village dates back to at least 1090, when it was spelled Barcestone.
Now part of Selby
district, the village previously gave its name to the
former wapentake of Barkston
Ash. The Ash part of the name comes from a large ash tree said
to be at the approximate centre of the ancient county of Yorkshire, where
meetings for the wapentake would be held.
What is now
the A162 London Road was a turnpike constructed in 1769. The
Main Street and the major part of the village goes east
from the junction with this.
The ash tree that stands
on the top of Main Street in Barkston Ash was often
said to mark the centre of Yorkshire. It was replaced in the 1980s because
of age and disease and a new tree was planted in its place. A section of the
original tree was kept and is still available to see. According to a legend
concerning Barkston's eponymous ash tree, anyone who
spits at the tree is destined to be struck by lightning a year and a day later;
an apocryphal figure, known as Jack Foll, is supposed to have suffered this
fate. It is also said that until the eighteenth century the Barkston
Ash folly (a form of medieval football involving pigs’ bladders and lighteners or
wooden staves) was played by young men of the village. The game is supposed to
have been commemorating Jack Foll.
Barkston Ash was also the name of the
local parliamentary constituency of Barkston Ash until
1983, when its boundaries were redrawn to divide the area
into Elmet and Selby.