A story was sent recently to the editor of that most august Yorkshire newspaper, The Bluffington Post:
Black Prince accused of improper behaviour
“The Black Prince, renowned throughout English history as the epitome of chivalry, who fought alongside his father Edward III in France and made his name at the battles of Crecy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356, has been labelled in Leeds as a suspected molester of women. Despite having had no connection with Leeds in his lifetime, the Black Prince has sat astride his horse, sword at his side, in Leeds City Square since 1903. Yesterday, early rail commuters crossing the square observed tell-tale footprints leading from the horse to one of the eight naked nymphs on the edge of the square and two muddy palm prints placed upon her breast. Local eyewitnesses say this is not the first time such evidence has been on view. No living soul has ever witnessed the prince get down from his horse, walk across the square and lay a hand on one of the nymphs that border the square and return to his horse. Some Leeds folk interviewed by our reporter expressed sympathy for the poor lad; he has spent a hundred and sixteen years gazing at the eight beauties and some say he should be allowed the odd indiscretion. It seems none of the locals has yet had the temerity to inform the prince, nor the folk interviewed, of the #MeToo movement for fear of being decapitated.”
Whilst the newspaper report is fake, I can assure readers the appearance of footsteps from time to time is true (curiously during student's Rag Week). So what is the relevance of this piece of frippery to the subject of Leeds penned by a sometimes overly serious writer on landscape? The answer is Edward III, father of The Black prince. All will become clearer when I put the story of Leeds into context.
Unlike my hometown, Leeds is firmly and
defiantly in the north. A different language is spoken up here. A Scouser* in
my wife’s family, displaying famous northern bluntness once said “It’s people
that matter not places”. When I arrived in Leeds in 1983 for the next stage of
my bookselling career I encountered even plainer Loiner speech: “Where there’s
muck there’s brass”. Better still is the seventeenth century proverb “muck and
money go together”. With a population of three quarters of a million people in
just over fourteen hundred square kilometres it could be thought that Leeds people
have transcended the land, swamped it and ruined it all in the pursuit of
‘brass’. I don’t agree with the Scouser. Place does matter along with the
people, it is of equal importance. Loiners have shown remarkable commercial
nouse over six hundred years in exploiting the landscape by the River Aire, but
have not despoiled it.
So what has muck, brass and Leeds got in
common? The simple answer is considerable. The longer answer is they have been
inextricably linked since the reign of King Edward III who did much to help the
establishment of the regional sheep and wool industry because Edward required
heavy funding to fight his wars in France. Therefore the government and Edward legislated
that all overseas trade in certain goods must be transacted by the government (which
bought up all England’s wool in partnership with approved merchants) and
exported at specific designated market towns or ports. These were called the
‘staple ports’ and in the case of the export of wool, Calais was chosen as the
staple port, the only port through which English wool could be exported. This English system remained in place for nearly two centuries, in the process keeping prices high. By the reign of Edward wool was traded successfully on a large scale from Yorkshire when Leeds became am important market centre. When a valuable commodity is regulated and taxed, prices reach upward. High prices enriched the Leeds wool merchants and encouraged them to expand their commercial activities. Wool became very big business. Until the mid twentieth century wool and cloth was a major industry in England and Wales. (By the 1940s with global markets opening up, cheaper imports and the fashion for synthetic materials, for the first time the meat from sheep earned more than the fleece for farmers.)
Leeds lies at the heart of the topography
of our overcrowded island of Great Britain. It typifies the attraction of urban
centres, which draw increasing numbers of men and women to live and work. They
do not farm, they do not tend to nature nor do they work in the woods. In Leeds
they make things. As we have seen, Edward III in his fifty-year reign did much
to aid the wool industry in Yorkshire. Leeds owes its historical prosperity to
sheep. The initial stage of this ‘Northern Powerhouse’ industrial revolution
led to machines being required to convert wool to cloth. So casting of metals was
established to make the machines. Chemicals, soaps and leathers were also
needed for the men and women who made the metals. A Leeds-based industry in
furniture was created (Thomas Chippendale was born in 1718 twelve miles away in Otley) to
fill the homes of the prospering labour force. Printing and bookselling thrived
in the swelling industry of books to entertain and educate the workers and
their families. By the mid twentieth century Leeds was a leading British producer
of all these commodities and there were more; cardboard boxes, mineral waters,
jams, brushes, clocks and watches were all key products made in Leeds.
Now it is a fact that workers love to
shop. As far back as 1207 one Ralph Payne who had acquired land bordering the
River Aire laid out a new town that had shops. I admire Ralph’s commercial
instincts as he set about getting a financial return from his land. He created
a market with adjacent “plots for houses, shops and gardens extending on both
sides to back lanes. This market place later became known as Briggate, brycg being the Old English word for
bridge, and gata the Old Norse for a
way or street”. The plots set down on either side of the street were called
‘burgages’. Briggate today is still a magnet for shoppers from all over
Britain. It is home to branches of leading fashion stores, coffee houses and
hairdressers – just like in the thirteenth century. The street is famously
proportioned in that it is one chain wide, a chain being four perches in old
money or sixty-six feet in the modern idiom; or more simply the width of a
cricket pitch. Now this is not because Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott (not a Loiner but Fitzwilliam born) has been around since 1207 –
although to some Leeds folk it feels like that – but a perch could be
subdivided easily for measuring out the plots for houses and shops.
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| Lower Briggate |
I have watched people taking a walk up and
down Briggate. Few raise their eyes
above shop window level. It is difficult to do otherwise. Retailers compete to
attract shoppers with ever more garish and daring window displays. If you do
look up you will not see what Leeds
looked like many centuries ago. It must be remembered Briggate has been the
heart of modern commerce since Edward III’s unwitting gift (of high prices for
wool) to the local merchants. Business people down the ages are keen to set
fashions. Then as now there was a constant desire to make properties look
modern. You will see only building frontages from the seventeenth century and
later when the idea of preserving the past took hold. You will see evidence of
the burgage plots. Nonetheless you will enter Whitelocks public house, established in 1715, as I
did in my first week in the city and then move past Whitelocks to get a sense
of what life in the narrow streets was like five hundred years ago.
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| Whitelocks public house |
“The
police don’t move us on as they know we can keep warm and we don’t cause anyone
any trouble,” Craig told me.
I asked him why he stayed in Leeds. “It’s
Spice City to me,” he replied. “Look in any of the alley ways up Briggate and
you can find everything you need in life.”
Leeds may be the variety of life but I
discovered subsequently that in urban argot ‘spice’ is a word given to
synthetic marijuana or fake weed. However, Craig looked perky enough so whichever way you look at it spice were not doing him too much harm.
The fabulous architecture of Leeds
commercial buildings has provided space for the creation of world-famous
companies. One such became Britain’s favourite shop for ‘smalls’. In 1884 the
open market off Briggate housed Michael Marks’ first stall. Ten years later
Marks took into partnership with him Thomas Spencer. They operated penny
bazaars with a strapline of ‘Don’t ask the price – it’s a penny’. By 1980 Marks and Spencer had become one of the world’s largest retail businesses, fondly
referred to by many as Marks and Sparks and where most citizens have at one
time or another bought their smalls.
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| Briggate in 2019 |
Not far from the birthplace of Marks and
Spencer I found the first office of E.J.Arnold, Britain’s leading educational
supplier, publisher and printer and a significant competitor of mine in my early
career. Established in 1870 at No. 3 Briggate, now a gentleman’s hairdresser, I
was amused to see it’s neighbour is a purveyor of sex toys and aids. We in the
book trade knew our place. The history of Leeds includes many people who have
imprinted their personality on the landscape. Benjamin Gott was one, an
industrialist and a millionaire when he died in 1840. His textile factory in
Leeds was for a time the largest factory in the world. He was a hugely
successful entrepreneur, mayor of the city and benefactor. In his day there
were no professional cycling or football teams requiring obscene amounts of
sponsorship so he invested in almshouses for the poor. An excellent man, he
initiated the city’s philosophical and literary society.
On my arrival in Leeds my first sight of
one of the city’s iconic buildings, the town hall filled me with foreboding. It
is a stupendous Victorian structure I admit, but it is so severe, so dark and so
stark; like a mausoleum. When I searched for some points of human interest, to
learn more about the music and the vibes of the city, I uncovered a bizarre
legend. North of the town hall is a famous hotel, the Victoria. It is believed
that a tunnel linked the buildings for the judges working in the former. My
knowledge of judges is that they like a tipple, but their use of the tunnel may not have been for what we think. The Victoria was built to house those with business
at the Leeds Assizes. Much later by 1970 The Victoria had become a venue for
nascent pop music bands. It gave space for Mark Knopfler, a student at the
university and journalist with The
Yorkshire Post, to perform and try out his compositions. He also went on to
be a global brand. Back across the street in the town hall I heard tell of the
Leeds International Piano Competition. Inaugurated in 1961 by three notable
local women (Fanny Waterman, Marion, Countess of Harewood and Roslyn Lyons)
every three years young pianists from around the world come to Leeds where the
winner will perform successfully in the town hall.
Again in 1983 on arriving in Leeds my wife
said to me, “Let’s try out some local Yorkshire culture”.
“What shall it be?” I said. “Rugby league
or Opera North?” We tried them both and after thirty-six years we still
thrill to the works of Verdi, Puccini and Britten. ‘Oop north’ here in Leeds,
opera going is inclusive, not just an activity for the elite; after all it lets
me in and I am a mere Tony Hancock fan. Opera North’s headquarters, the Romanesque
Grand Theatre with a Gothic interior, plays home to yet another piece of
auspicious Leeds life.
Like in other British cities over hundreds
of years many women and men have adopted this urban Leeds landscape to create
innovative industry, commerce and music. The cities swelled with new, wealthier
residents whilst the rural villages began to empty. My working life in
retailing coincided with a ‘golden age’ of the book business and popular
literature. As I have noted before, workers like to shop; they like to be seduced
by displays of ‘stuff’ from clothes to food, books and toys. Almost twenty
years into the current millennium citizens are looking for a different
vibration to support their shopping thrills. The world wide web of things is
hooking people. A tangible shop is losing its attraction. Yet when I walk
around the Leeds landscape on a Sunday, when most of the city shops are closed,
the scene is one of large numbers of citizens enjoying the peace of the inspiring
built environment without its weekday revolving doors. Although, Briggate is
open. Briggate is swarming with people
The fell tops of my beloved Lake District
and Yorkshire Dales have not changed in usage in five thousand years (contrary
to the view of trendy ‘re-wilders’ of today, northern hills have been devoid of
trees for all this time) and mankind has grazed sheep there ever since.
Likewise, since its inception, Briggate in Leeds has not changed in its
essential and prime activity of commerce. The common denominator is the people,
working the land and tending their flocks in the former; and opening their
shops and minding their stock in the latter. Briggate and Leeds would never
have prospered without sheep. Sheep and their wool have provided a way of life
for English people for ten thousand years since the animal became domesticated.
Late in life I have come to celebrate the
sheep and I have adopted Leeds, or Leeds has adopted me. I admire the Loiners
who are suspicious “of that lot dahn south” but get on with mankind’s role of
adapting their land to make money and enjoy the process. Yet Leeds is not just about
industry and old buildings. Down the years the civic authorities have clung
tenaciously to their parks. Roundhay, Temple Newsam, Middleton and Gott’s are spacious,
urban parks with woodland, lakes and plentiful wildlife. A visit to Roundhay is
an essential part of the locals’ weekend activities. It is renowned throughout
the north and Yorkshire folk, famously known for being forward, are proud of
it. The Skipton born entertainer Charlie Lawson tells of it like this:
A Dales farmer
arrived in Leeds to sell his sheep and, wishing to pay a visit to Roundhay
Park, he boarded a tram in City Square. When the conductor came for his fare,
the farmer said: “Roundhay Park, please.”
“Sorry sir, but this
tram is going the wrong way for you,” said the conductor.
“Well, doan’t tell
me abaht it, goa tell t’blinkin’ driver,” was the fiery retort.
The natives of Leeds are proud and confident
folk. Yet a split in their view about being part of Europe is plainly visible.
They collectively and narrowly voted to remain in the European Union at the
2016 referendum. This was contrary to the resulting votes cast by the citizens
of the rest of West Yorkshire. May be when they alight from their commuter
trains and buses and walk through City Square of a morning they glance up at
the Black Prince and are reminded of glorious victories against the French over
six hundred years ago, and are eager for another go at the foreigners. For me
as a Remainer and an unelected Loiner the value in the wool trade cemented the
city’s dependence of business with the rest of Europe. Once the vote was
declared I just want to ‘Leave’ and get on with business.
*For international readers a glossary of
northern terms may be helpful:
Brass (rhymes
with Crass) - Money
Scouser - a citizen of Merseyside and the
Wirral Peninsular
Loiner - a citizen of Leeds
Muck (rhymes with book) - Dirt, manure
Northern Powerhouse - a phrase dreamed up
by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer referring to a proposal (from
Westminster) to boost economic growth in northern England
Westminster - a place where crazy people work
Geoffrey Boycott - a Leeds based cricketer
who has much in common with marmite.
Marmite - a type of savoury spread on
bread (loved and hated by equal numbers of people, superior to Vegemite, but notoriously difficult to remove from a crease).
Smalls - underwear and socks.
Oop north - a place that is the centre of the universe to anyone living within 20 miles of the Pennine hills and where
normal people live.
Reading one of the following books will
enhance an enjoyable visit to Leeds:
Briggate
Yards & Arcades;
Peter Brears & Kevin Grady; Leeds Civic Trust. 2007
Baines’s
Account of the woolen manufacture of England; Edward Baines; David & Charles. 1970
Memoirs
of wool, woolen manufacture and the trade (particularly in England); from the
earliest to the present times; John Smith. 1765. A ripping good read!
