LEEDS

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.

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.

Whitelocks public house

Where Briggate intersects with Bar Lane I met a Glaswegian named Craig and stopped to talk with him. He was sitting on the pavement, begging for his next cup of tea, or maybe something stronger. He had been homeless for six months since his mother had died and her landlord would not let him remain in the house. So he was evicted and he took to the streets. He bunks down each night with other homeless people under the hot air vents in a cavernous void under the city railway station.

 “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.

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!