Savile Town Marina, Dewsbury, South Yorkshire

The bad weather did not arrive until early afternoon and then it was of little consequence, however none of this interfered with our first day of exploration of the city. Leeds boasts the fourth largest student population in the country, the country’s fourth largest urban economy and the largest legal and financial centre in the United Kingdom after London. It boasts a number of other superlatives and so we came with high expectations. I have already referred to how this whole area is such a tangle of urban roads and dense population, Leeds alone having a population of over 780,000, and as we drove our way into the centre this morning, guided solely by our Tomtom, I was so very glad I was neither navigating nor driving. 

I had done some homework as regards parking and settled on the multi-story near the University of Leeds, which proved to be quite suitable, costing us £6.50 for up to six hours. But we were without a map and that near the pedestrian entrance was such that we headed off in the wrong direction, away from the city centre and it was some time after passing through university associated streets that we realised our error.

We filled more than five hours discovering the wonderful retail centre of the city, lovely shopping malls, extensive pedestrianized streets, busy indoor and outdoor markets and the few civic buildings worth viewing mostly surrounded by pop-up exhibition marquees. 

Leeds is famous for its shopping arcades, the first to open was Thornton’s Arcade in 1878, followed by Queen’s Arcade in 1889, the Grand Arcade in 1897 and the Victoria Arcade in 1904.

The Kirkgate Market is the largest market in the north of England, housed in a lovely Edwardian building, a descendant of the medieval woollen markets that were instrumental in making Leeds the early focus of the region’s textile industry. The open market behind here is where Michael Marks set up his stall in 1884 with the slogan “Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny”, the genesis of the present-day retail giant Marks & Spencer.

The Victorian Quarter is stunning, full of very smart upmarket shops, the sort that do not invite simple folk like me inside. However we enjoyed walking up through the hallways and listening to piano music; we wondered whether the young pianist who had his backpack propped up beside the piano was an opportunist or more formerly “employed” to entertain the elegant customers of the mall. 

We spent some time after lunch in the Leeds City Museum, which offers the social history of the city as well as the normal geological overview, and the Roman and Saxon settlers who came before the Normans, this history repeated in most of the museums we have visited. 

We learned that sheep have been the key to Leeds wealth for centuries, as it has for so much of Yorkshire. Leeds became the main market for woollen cloth in the West Riding and by 1770 Leeds merchants dealt with a third of all cloth exported from England. 

However the industrial revolution soon changed the face of the area, the way people lived and worked in Leeds as it did the country all over. Between 1790 and 1840 Leeds was a boom town with people flocking in from the countryside for work. Great wealth and great poverty developed side by side. In 1775 the population of Leeds was 17,000, by 1841 it was 89,000. Despite the fact it was the largest town in Yorkshire, it was not until 1893 that Leeds officially became a city.

Although much of the industry here was based on the spinning industry, the 1858 Exhibition of Local Industry in Leeds showed how diverse the reality; engineering, leather and chemical industries, footwear, printing and clothing manufacturing.
We learned too that Leeds did not manage to avoid the bombing of the Second World War, suffering nine air raids between 1941 and 1945. Seventy seven people were killed and three hundred and twenty seven injured. One hundred and ninety seven buildings were destroyed and 7,623 damaged. And this all learned in the same week that Mexico City is suffering similar disaster, not from bombing by mad men but by the forces of the earth.  

The chaotic noise and movement of small school children under inadequate control of teachers and parents drove us from the museum, this the second of two big disappointments, the other being the discovery that the city’s art gallery was still closed after already a year of renovation.
We checked out the Civic Hall, a large building housing the City Council, designed by Vincent Harris and completed in 1933. It is this, rather than the Town Hall that includes offices such as the Lord Mayor’s room, council chambers and a banqueting hall. We thought it quite ugly and the four golden owl sculptures, each nine foot tall, perched on high points of the structure, do nothing by way of enhancement. This monstrosity is apparently a Grade II listed building.  

Within view of this is the Town Hall, a less offensive building, which is used for concerts and for the performance of weddings, one which was on the cusp of happening as we arrived. This more attractive building was designed by Cuthbert Broderick, and completed in 1858. Here too was a mess of temporary structures all about the frontage, so one had a rather abbreviated view, however we asked if we could peek inside the concert hall and were duly rewarded with its splendour. 

As we made our way back up the hill to the car park, we found ourselves against the stream of students departing the university. We could well believe the statistical boasting of the student numbers in Leeds. 

Back at camp, we were visited by a couple of fellow caravanners who had called in to check this CL out. It seems that they were camped somewhere nearby but not at all suitable and keen to decamp. Encouraged by our review, they soon returned with their van in tow and set up all too close. It would appear they have gone out to dine with friends or family and may well find the crowd of motorcyclists over at the pub, who have arrived in their absence, not acceptable either. I fear our advice may well be considered unreliable.