The Dark Arches…spooky name, isn’t it? But it’s a spooky place, built in the late 1860s when Leeds acquired a second railway station, known as New Station. The arches, which are really viaducts, held up the platforms and the trackm and go over the river and the goit that served the old King’s Mill.

It took around 18 million bricks to construct the arches, and if you look up, the construction is as grand as any cathedral. The arches were used by firms for storage, often of flammable material like tallow and resin. In January 1892, a fire broke out in the arch warehouse belonging to “Soapy” Joe Watson. Three platforms were destroyed, but miraculously, only one foreman died.

The other three plaform stayed open,as did Wellington Station, and rebuilding work began immediately. The fire features in the opening of my book Skin Like Silver.

The arches were pitch dark at night, a favourite haunt of thieves and sex workers for decades.

Eventually, the area beyond was developed into Granary Wharf, and by the 90s, the arches were craft and food shops that delined. These days it’s offices and a way through to Granary Whaft, the start of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and over into Holbeck.

Time for the weekly reminder that I do have rather a good book out, featuring Simon Westow, the thief-taker, and his assistant Jane, up against a gang of grave robbers in Leeds in the 1820s…