Tag: leeds

Behind the Gods of Gold

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I’d always said I’d never write a Victorian crime novel. I was certain of it. With so many already out there, what was left to add?
But somehow, I reckoned without Leeds tapping me on the shoulder.
Walk through the city and the Victorian era doesn’t just echo. It roars. It’s a time you can literally reach out and touch. The city’s architectural jewels are its grand Victorian buildings – the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange, and the solid, powerful edifices put up by the banks and insurance companies. They were the bricks and mortar promises of solidity, propriety and prosperity. A reminder of when this was one of the industrial powerhouses of the British Empire. And at the other end of the scale, the back-to-back houses in places like Harehills and Kirkstall stand as brusque accusations of the poverty so rife back then.
A world away, yet still close enough to be a very real part of today. But I wasn’t interested.
Then Leeds gave me the tale of its Gas Strike.
By 1890, the workers had begun to organise. The unions had were gaining strength. And that year, with the Leeds Gas Strike, they showed their power. Their terms of work changed by the council, wages cut, jobs slashed, the gas workers had no choice but to walk out. ‘Replacement workers’ were drafted in from Manchester and London to stoke the furnaces and keep the gas flowing. But they didn’t know they’d have to face a mob thousands strong. In fact, they’d been recruited under false pretences, believing they’d be employed at a new works. As soon as they discovered the truth, most abandoned their posts. The lights were flickering. Factories were closing. Within three days the strikers had their victory. For austere times it was an glorious story: the workers won.
I was intrigued. This might be a tale worth telling.

Reading more about the strike led to Tom Maguire. He was a young labour activist in Leeds, still in his middle twenties in 1890, a believer who helped build the labour movement, and became one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party. More than that, he was a poet (it’s a line from one of his works that gives Gods of Gold its title) who died in poverty in 1895 – yet thousands reportedly lined the roads as his coffin was taken to the cemetery.
There was definitely something here. But it needed something more personal to tip the scales and make me renege on my no-Victorian promise.
A couple of years ago I wrote a short story that took its inspiration from Atkinson Grimshaw’s dark, evocative painting Reflections On The Aire: On Strike, Leeds 1879. It shows the river, almost empty of ships, and a woman standing alone on the bank, clutching a bundle. Annabelle Atkinson. That was what I called her. And even then I knew we had unfinished business. She was too powerful, too vibrant a character to ever be satisfied with a single, brief appearance.
But she bided her time. It was only when I was researching the Gas Strike that she came and sat beside me in a swish of velvet.
‘I know all about this, luv,’ she said with a smile. ‘I was there, remember? Do you want me to tell you about it?’
So Annabelle introduced me to her fiancé, Detective Inspector Tom Harper, and the other characters in her life. We strolled along the streets of Hunslet and the Leylands together, drank in the Victoria in Sheepscar, were jostled by the crowds on Briggate and window-shopped in the Grand Pygmalion on Boar Lane. We sang along with the music hall tunes they loved – “My Old Man,” “Sidney The One-Week Wonder,” “’Enerey The Eighth”.
After that, how could I walk away?
Especially when with them came the ghosts of my own family, of Isaac Nickson who brought his wife and children to Leeds from Malton in the 1820s, of his descendants – William, John William, Harold Ewart – and the stories they had to tell me.
I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t even have a choice any more.
‘Tom Harper pounded down Briggate, the hobnails from his boots scattering sparks behind him…’

A Leeds Storytime

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It’s been a long time since I wrote a #leedsstorytime on Twitter. Taking a folk tale and re-telling it, maybe embellishing it a little. Because if the stories from the tradition aren’t told, they wither.

There was a place called Jenny White’s Hole in Leeds. It was a set of stairs between two houses on the Calls, leading directly down into the River Aire. No one seems to know about Jenny herself. This is my take on how it got its name.

Jenny White was a pretty Leeds lass, courted by all the lads. She worked as a mill hand and took her fun in the evenings. It was a time of factories and smoke, the bitter taste of soot in the air. But Jenny was young, she loved life. People danced to fiddlers and sang the songs they’d known all their lives. It was a hard life, but there was sun in it, too.
The lads threw their caps at Jenny. They all wanted her. But she only had eyes for Joshua, a handsome lad with cruel eyes. He paid her no mind, though. He could have any girl he desired, and his father was a mill foreman, with power and prestige. But his friends told him to court her. She was a right bobby dazzler, she’d make a good wife. So he looked. She was pretty.
More than that, she was willing. Where lads usually did her bidding, she was willing to make all the time she had for him. Joshua, though, saw her weakness. She loved him with all her heart, but he treated her cruelly. He wouldn’t turn up when he promised, just leave her standing for hours, lonely and heartbroken. Even when they were together, he’d hardly give her attention. Unless they were alone. In those moments she felt happy.
So she was overjoyed when Joshua suggested they wed. He might not be perfect, but he’d be hers forever. Yet she quickly learned that married life with Joshua was worse than courting him. Much worse.
He’d stay out in the beershops until all hours, coming home drunk and taking out his anger on her. After a year of this, Jenny White understood the gap between the hope of her heart and her life. He wasn’t going to change, for her or for anyone. She had nothing and no one; her parents had died.
With each day the feelings grew worse. And there was no way out, no escape. To a friend she bemoaned “the marriage vows as false as dicer’s oaths.” One night Joshua didn’t come home at all. Part of her hoped he might have died, to free her. But someone told her he’d left the inn with a young, pretty girl.
Despondent, Jenny began to walk. Her route took her along the Calls, a street of low, dark houses, poor and dismal. Between two houses stood a set of steps, leading down into the chilly, damp blackness. Jenny followed them. And as she placed one foot in front of another, her spirit began to lighten, as if she might fly away. Down she went, as the water of the river lapped around her feet. Down until it reached her knees.
Someone saw her disappear down the stairs and ran, looking to stop her. But when he looked, there was no Jenny in the water. She’d moved out of sight and out of this world. No body was ever found, although people searched.
Some said she’d drowned. Others believed she’d drifted until she found a place where lovers spoke truly. Where hearts were safe and words were bonds. Perhaps she’d slipped through to somewhere she could smile and laugh again. But it seemed as if she gone through a hole in the world. Which is why that spot became known as Jenny White’s Hole.

A Little Bit Of History For The Soul

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It’s a time to look forward to: Heritage Days. The weekend when so many older buildings are open, free of charge, to the public. Many of them aren’t even on show for the rest of the year. And Leeds is definitely blessed with them – 83 this time around. It’s impossible to see every one over a single weekend, of course.
This time around it began with a tour of Beckett Street cemetery. Far more interesting than it sounds, one of the oldest municipal cemeteries in Britain (the oldest is in Hunslet, also in Leeds), which contains the fascinating subscription graves (or guinea graves, as they’re known). For a guinea, the dead could be commemorated on a gravestone, rather than be buried nameless. The downside is that there will be five or six bodies in the grace, and more on the other side of the stone. Even in death, they’re as crowded and packed together as they were in life.
But the place does have the grave of Tom Maguire, who features as a minor character in Gods of Gold, and who, in life, was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. A great man.

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Sunday was Gipton Well, about half a mile from where I grew up. It’s a place to take the waters, just small, but once only one of many spas dotted around Leeds. Built in 1671, it’s fed by a small spring, and the privileged few who used it would wade or sit in the water, removing clothes in the outer room, which also had a fireplace, before plunging into the cold pool. The place has resonance for me, as the climax of The Constant Lovers takes place there. Going inside for the first time in many years, it was just as I remembered it – but in better, cared-for shape.

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And then, Whitkirk Church, which dates from the 15th century, with a tower completed by 1440, and a continuous line of priests since 1185, although there was a church mentioned in the Domesday Book. Originally a Knights Templar church (it’s close to Temple Newsman, which was owned by the Templars, and there are two small houses close by with Templar crosses), it’s been renovated a couple of times, but still retains a beautiful medieval simplicity – although some of the memorials are very elaborate for as small church.

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The graveyard also has this wonderful headstone. A very modern sentiment. No names or date on it, just these words.

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The highlight of 2014’s Heritage Days, though, was a chance to tour Templeworks in Holbeck. The area was one of the Victorian industrial powerhouses of Leeds, although manufacturing is long since a thing of the past.
When it opened it 1841, Temple Mill (as it was then) was very modern. It was the brainchild of John Marshall, who’d run Marshall’s Mill next door since the 1790s.

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The frontage of Temple Mill is a replica of the Temple of Horus at Edfu in Egypt.

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Behind that, though, it was thoroughly modern. The mill itself was the largest room in the world, with 17 exits in case of fire.

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Used for spinning flax, it ran without electricity, powered by steam, generated in the cellar, while the light came from a forest of skylights on the roof that look like something from a science fiction film; they must have seemed completely alien at the time.

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To provide the heat and humidity needed for spinning flax, all the iron pillars holding up the ceiling in the mill were hollowed, allowing water to trickle down naturally. The moisture level was increase by turfing the roof and having sheep crop the grass there (they were transported up and down in the world’s first hydraulic lift).
Marshall was a hard master, but also enlightened to a degree. He ran a crèche for the women who worked at the mill and there was schooling for the young workers until they were 12.
The building was in continuous use into the 21st century, last as a catalogue headquarters for Kay’s. These days, though, as Templeworks, it’s an artist’s co-op that survives without funding. Much of the income is generated from TV companies filming there, but it also hosts theatre and music events.
That reinvention is wonderful, but typical of what’s going on across Holbeck. The factories have gone, but these days it’s the digital hub of Leeds – and what is digital except the industry of the 21st century?
But some of the history is left behind in the fabric. Like these wonderful chimneys still standing at Tower Works, both of them based on old Italian church towers. Like Temple Mill, they’re a reminder that there could even be romance in industry.

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The Book Launch

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Thank you so much to everyone who came to the launch for Gods of Gold last night, and those who couldn’t make it but were there in spirit. It was held at the Leeds Library, the oldest subscription library in Britain, founded in 1768 and in the same location since 1808. I was in the ‘new room,’ which only dates from 1880…

I’m grateful to the staff there for their work, and for having me as a guest. They also had the Yorkshire Weekly News from July 1890 on display, with a very long (and wonderfully biased) story about the Gas Strike that forms the backdrop to Gods of Gold (hint: they weren’t happy that the workers won).

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There was wine (of course) and two people brought homemade cake, which was delicious. The only downside was that those sitting there had to listen to me wittering on.

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On the upside, there was time to mingle. I got to meet old friends and new, including my MP, Fabian Hamilton, and a wonderful woman of 93, very spry and alert, who was able to tell me about Kirkgate and Bell’s Pharmacy in the 1920s and 1930s. I feel incredibly privileged to have had everyone come out for me and this book.

Thanks, too, to Radish Books for taking care of the book sales. I was astonished when the pile was devoured by customers in seconds (even my own copy vanished, but thankfully someone returned it). It’s a pretty magical feeling when someone ask you to sign a book for them. Events like last night make all the hard work of writing worthwhile. And even more grateful to everyone at Severn House for their belief in my work.

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Thank you all.

Annabelle Atkinson and Mr. Grimshaw

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Annabelle Atkinson is deep at the heart of Gods of Gold. The whole idea began with her, really. But she made her first appearance in this story I gave to Leeds Book Club a couple of years ago. And after that, she would leave me alone; she still hasn’t.

But, as the book launch for Gods of Gold is tomorrow night, here’s the first time Annabelle showed herself. A little different, a little younger, but still recognisable…

Inspired by the painting Reflections on the Aire: On Strike, Leeds 1879, by Atkinson Grimshaw

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On both sides of the river rows of factory chimneys stood straight and tall and silent, bricks blackened to the colour of night. Smoke was only rising from a few today, but the smell of soot was everywhere, on the breath and on the clothes. It was the shank of an October afternoon and the gas lamps were already lit, dusk gathering in the shadows.
He stood and looked at the water. Where barges should be crowded against the warehouses like puppies around a teat there was nothing. Just a single boat moored in the middle of the Aire, no sails set, its masts spindly and bare as a prison hulk.
He coughed a little, took the handkerchief from his pocket and spat delicately into it. This was the time of year when it always began, when men and women found their lungs tender, when the foul air caught and clemmed in the chest and the odour from the gasworks cut through everything so that even the bitter winter snow tasted of it.
What sun there was hung low in the west, half-hidden by clouds. A few more minutes and he’d be finished then walk home to Knostrop, leave the stink and stench of Leeds for trees and grass and the sweet smell of fresher air. First, though, he needed to complete the sketch, to capture these moments.
Tomorrow he’d start in the studio, to try and find the mood that overwhelmed him now, Leeds in the still of the warehousemen’s strike, no lading, no voices shouting, no press of people and trade along the river.
“What tha’ doing?”
He turned. He hadn’t heard her come along the towpath. But there she was, peering over his shoulder at the lines on the pad, the shadings and simple strokes that were his shorthand.
“Tha’ drawing?”
“Sketching,” he answered with a smile and slipping the charcoal into his jacket pocket.
“Aye, it’s not bad,” she told him with approval, reaching out a finger with the nail bitten short and rimmed with dirt. “I like that,” she said, pointing at the way he’d highlight the buildings as they vanished towards the bridge, hinting at the cuts and alleys and what lay beyond.
“Thank you.”
He studied her properly, a girl who was almost a woman, in an old dress whose pattern had faded, the hem damp and discoloured where she’d walked across the wet grass. She wore her small, tattered hat pinned into her hair.
At most she was twenty, he judged. As she opened her mouth to speak he could see that one of her teeth was missing, the others yellowed, and her face held the start of lines that belonged to a woman twice her age. Her cheeks were sunk from hunger, the bones of her wrists like twigs. But her eyes were clear and full of mischief. She carried a bundle in her left hand. At first he thought she was a ragpicker, done for the day; then he noticed how she cradled it close and understood it was what little she owned in the world.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Anabelle Atkinson, sir,” she replied with the faintest of smiles. “Me mam said she wanted summat nice around her.”
He nodded, watching the water and the sky again. In a minute the sky would part, leaving the sun pale as lemon reflecting on the river. Perhaps the last sun of the year, except for a few days when the sun would sparkle on the snow around his home. He held his breath for a moment, ready to work quickly.
“My name’s Atkinson, too,” he said distracted by the light, committing it to memory.
“Happen as we’re related, then.” He could feel her eyes on him. “But mebbe not.”
“It’s my middle name,” he explained quietly, “but I prefer it to my Christian name.”
“Why’s that, then?”
Very quickly he fumbled in his pocket, drawing out coloured pencils and adding to the sketch, the reflections on the river, the gold of a fading sun mingling with the browns and greens of the dirty water, smudging with the edge of his hand, thinking, putting it all away in his memory for tomorrow when he’d sit in the studio with his paints.
“It suits me better,” he answered her finally, squinting at his work, then at the scene before adding some more touches.
“That’s right,” she said slowly, as he was about to add more umber to the water. “That’s it.” There was awe in her voice, as if she couldn’t believe nature could be captured that way. “It looks alive.”
“It’s just preparation,” he explained. “I’ll paint it soon.”
“That what you are, then? An artist?”
“I am.”
He was a successful one, too. Whatever he put on canvas sold, almost before it had dried. For the last nineteen years it had been his living, since he broke away from the tedium of being a railway clerk, the job he thought might crush his heart. With no training and only the support of his wife, he’d known that painting could make his soul sing. These days he was a wealthy man, one who’d made art pay him well. Now they knew him all around the country; in London any man would deign to receive him.
“You must make a bob or two.”
Grimshaw smiled.
“I get by.”
“You’ve got good clothes and you talk posh.”
He chuckled.
“Don’t be fooled. I’m not as posh as you’d think. I grew up in Wortley and my father worked on the railways. What about you, Annabelle Atkinson? Where do you live?”
“Me mam’s in one of them houses up on the Bank.”
He knew them, squalid back-to-backs with no grass or green, some of the worst housing in Leeds. No good air and the children ragged as tinkers’ brats. It was where the Irish lived, crammed together in dwellings that everyone said should be pulled down.
“How many of you?”
“Only four now. I’m not there no more, though. Had a job as a maid in one of them big houses out past Headingley.”
“Had?” He eyed her sharply.
“They didn’t like me having gentleman callers. Said it wasn’t proper for someone in my station.” She put on a voice as she spoke and her eyes flashed with anger. “Me mam won’t have me back. No room, not if I’m not bringing in a wage.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll find summat. There’s always work for them as is willing to graft.”
He thought of the life in her and his own children, six alive and the ten who’d died. Of his wife, twenty-two years married, with her stern face and the eternal look of weariness.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“There’s rooms. At least when they turned me out they paid what they owed. I’ll not go short for a while.”
He looked down at the sketch. It caught everything well, and it would be a good painting, another one to bring in a good ten pounds or more. But it was a landscape unpeopled.
“Annabelle Atkinson, can you do something for me?”
“What?” she asked warily, too familiar with the ways of men.
“Just stand about ten yards down the path, that’s all.”
“Why?”
He tapped the drawing with a fingernail.
“I want to put you in this, that’s all?”
“Me?” She laughed. “Go on, you don’t want me in that.”
“I do. Please.”
She shook her head, smiling all the while.
“You’re daft, you are.” But she still moved along the path, looking back over her shoulder. “Here?”
“Yes. Look out over the river. That’s it. Stay there.”
He was deft, seeing how she held the bundle, her bare arms, the hem of the dress high enough to show bare ankles, and a sense of longing in the way she held herself.
“I’m done,” he told her after a minute and she came back to him.
“That’s me?” she asked.
“It is.”
“Do I really look like that?”
“That’s how I see you,” he said with a smile. She kept staring at the paper.
“You’ll put that in your painting?”
“With more detail, yes.”
“What?”
“The pattern of the dress, things like that.”
Self-consciously she smoothed down the old material, her face suddenly proud, looking younger and less careworn. He dug into his trouser pocket, pulling out two guineas.
“This is for you.”
“What? All this?”
“I’m an artist. I pay my models.”
“But I didn’t do owt. I just stood over there,” she protested.
“I sketched you, and you’ll be in the painting. That makes you my model. Here, take it.”
Almost guiltily she plucked the money from his hand, tucking it away in the pocket of her dress.
“Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. “You’ve made my day, you have.”
“As you’ve made mine, Annabelle Atkinson.” He closed the sketch pad and put away the pencils and charcoal, then tipped his hat to her before walking away.
“So what is your name, then?” she asked.
“Atkinson Grimshaw.” He handed her his card. “I wish you and your baby well.”
“Me in a painting. There’s no one as’ll believe that.” She began to laugh, letting it rise into a full-throated roar, and he laughed with her.

Tiger, Tiger

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Jack had the shelter built at the bottom of the garden right after Mr. Chamberlain came back from Munich. I used to stand in the back bedroom and watch the men digging out the ground then laying the brick and putting on the concrete roof.
“When Hitler comes we’ll be safe now,” he told me. “And we won’t have to share it with anyone.”
He was wrong about that. But Jack was wrong about most things; the only time I can remember him being right was building the shelter. Even then, we didn’t need it. No bombs dropped in these parts of Leeds. We had a few raids, but nothing like those poor people down in London. I can’t imagine how they stood it.
Whenever the siren went off, everyone in the street would come into our shelter. None of them had built one; they’d more sense than brass, I suppose. Jack had signed up to do his bit. God only knew where he was – the only thing he’d managed to get past the censor was that he had brown knees. The way he managed to swing things he was probably in Filey, not Egypt.
So it was me and Michael for the duration. But he was at school during the day, and after that he was off with his pals until dark, pretending to machine gun every Nazi and win the war by himself. Still, once that siren wailed he was down in the shelter and as scared as the rest of us.
I had a job three mornings a week at the museum on Park Row. It might not have been as worthwhile as assembling shells or putting Spitfires together, but it was a little something. I enjoyed it, working there with Miss Woods and Mr. Johnson, who was too old to fight. He knew all about history, though. He’d given me a proper tour of the exhibits one day, even telling me about the Indian stuffed tiger that stood inside the doorway and the Egyptian mummy at the top of the stairs. Mr. Johnson boasted he could read the hieroglyphics. I didn’t believed a word, of course, but it didn’t matter. I liked the work there and it took me out of the house, around people, into all the whirl and bustle of town.
For some reason, I loved that tiger. It was threadbare, a little like an old teddy bear that had been loved too much, but it had personality. Every week I’d dust it and polish up the glass eyes in its head. The snarling mouth didn’t scare me. I always felt as if I could stroke it and it would just start purring.
From the bus I’d seen some of the damage the early raids did, all that wreckage at Marsh Lane Station, and it made me shudder. We weren’t safe at all; if a bomb landed on the shelter, we might as well have been hiding under cardboard. Jack had just wasted his money on an illusion again.
Michael was already in bed when the siren sounded. It was a Friday night, right on the stroke of nine, and for a moment my heart stopped, the way it always did when it heard the wail. In less than a minute he was down in the kitchen, socks, slippers and dressing gown over his pyjamas. I’d been listening to the wireless, one of those dance bands that sound like everyone else.
It was March. Outside, the sky was very clear, so many stars up there, and very cold.
“Stay there,” I told Michael, and dashed back into the house for our overcoats. Over the next quarter of an hour the neighbours drifted in. We talked for a while until all the gossip had been given out and we all knew which butcher might have mince the next day. There was a primus stove down there, the kettle boiling to make a pot of tea, and with the oil lamps at we could see each other – well, make out the faces and shapes, anyway.
After an hour and a half we’d run out of things to say. Shivers kept running through me from the cold. We were ready for the all-clear to sound, to go back to our beds and warm up. But there was only silence. Then I heard something off in the distance, like a hum growing louder. The Germans were coming.
It seemed like we were down there forever. We could hear the explosions down towards the city centre. God, I thought, what if one of them goes off course and drops its load on us? Old Mr. Henderson from number eleven climbed on the roof of the shelter to give us a running commentary. He was sixty if he was a day, but he was still active and in the Home Guard.
“Those are incendiaries,” he announced with a shout. “I can see them burning.” And later, when the planes seemed to come wave after wave and the soft crump of bombs was a constant sound, he’d cry out, “That must have done some damage,” until we all clambered out to join him.
A little after three we were all back in our houses. Michael trudged up to bed, the poor lamb could hardly keep his eyes open, but I couldn’t sleep. It had been like a thousand Guy Fawkes’ nights all in one, all light and fire and explosions. Except there was nothing fun about this. There was just terror and destruction and death.
I thought about the museum, hoping it had survived. And then I thought about Jack, somewhere in the world with his brown knees and I lay in bed and cried quietly until the alarm clock went off.

The bus could only go as far as Buslingthorpe Lane before the wardens stopped it. I wasn’t going to give up. Instead I walked into town. Quarry Hill Flats had taken a hit and there was smoke still coming from the roof of the market, with water running down George Street. The air smelt like gunpowder and I had to tread carefully around the rubble.
“You’d best watch yourself, luv,” one of the auxiliary firemen told me. “There’s stuff here that could tumble down on you.”
I smiled politely at him and walked on. There seemed to be plenty like me, people on their way to work, hoping there’d still be a business standing, and those who simply needed to see what the Germans had done to us. It seemed bad, but nothing like the newsreels, where street after street in London had been blown to nothing. If this was our Blitz then we’d come off lightly.
As soon as I turned onto Park Row I could see something was wrong. There was a huge hole in the road, a crater, and I started to walk faster, almost running down the pavement. I could see Miss Woods in the distance, holding something to her face. She was a spinster, fifty-three years old – she was always very exact – with some small private income. She worked at the museum because she wanted to, not because she needed the money. She was the first in and the last to leave every day, caring for the place as if it was her own home. I watched as she bent down and picked something up.
The whole front of the building had gone, as if a giant, petulant child had swept his hand across and crushed it. Stone, glass and wood were all scattered across the street, fallen into the hole and all around it. Men stood around, one or two in their ARP helmets, most just in caps, staring, pointing and talking.
Miss Woods seemed to be in shock when I looked at her, dazed, her eyes quite blank. She held up her hand and I could see what she’d rescued from the ground, a piece of old, dirty linen. At first I didn’t know what to make of it. Then I took in all the gaping frontage of the museum, the staircase little more than splinters now, and I realised it must have come from our mummy. It might be all that was left of him.
Everything I could see inside the building was blackened. Even the air seemed charred and dead. The desk where I worked didn’t exist any more, only a space on the burned and buckled floor where it had once been.
The tiger, I thought. But he was gone, too, not even a scrap of fur. It had all gone. Everything had gone. There was nothing they could shore up, they couldn’t make do with what was left. The museum was gone. I put my arm around Miss Woods’ shoulders. For a moment the contact seemed to startle her and she began to pull away. I smiled at her gently.
“I know,” I told her. “I know.”

The Oldest Building in West Yorkshire

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A few days ago I happened to read something in passing about the oldest building in West Yorkshire. It’s a church, of course, dating back to someone in the 700s CE, and it looked as if a fair bit of the original building survived.

It’s in Ledsham, about 10 miles east of Leeds, and a little north of Castleford. The name, according to Wikipedia, derives from ham, the Saxon word for home or farm. The conjecture, though, is that Led is an early reference to Leeds. Curious, as in the same period, Bede referred to Loidis, and later it became Ledes; there’s no other apparent reference to Led in relation to Leeds that I know of. It’s even more intriguing as there are two other villages close by, Ledston and the wonderfully-named Ledston Luck. Regardless of name, All Saints church still deserved a visit, and it was certainly worth the time.

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This is the original entrance, at the base of the tower at the west end. The decoration, sadly, is 19th century. But the original tower had two storeys (there’s a small blocked-in window higher up, as well as other blocked-in Saxon windows along thesSouth wall.

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It’s quite easy to make out the original nave, although the church was added to in Norman times – they increased the height of the tower, for example) and again in the 13th and 15 the centuries, adding a north aisle, replacing the chancel, putting in larger windows, and transforming the original porticus into what’s now the porch.

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The final restoration came in 1871, and was quite tasteful. A couple of things that didn’t come out in the pictures, though, are the fragments of an old cross built into the north aisle wall and an ancient stone used in the tower arch with a Roman carving of a cleaver in it.

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It’s a place well worth a visit, and there’s more to see in the graveyard. Hard to be certain, but this looks to be from 1665. If so, it’s worn remarkably well. No guarantees on this, though.

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And there’s even the mason’s name at the bottom.

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The church would be enough. But behind it stands a row of 11 stone cottages, dating from 1610. They were built for workers in the orphanage built by Lady Elizabeth Hastings (which also still stands, now Hastings Hall). The cottages are well-tended, and these days let to older residents of the area.

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Down past the hall is the old school house for Ledsham, about the same vintage as the hall and cottages, with the bell in the small tower above the roof.

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Didn’t stop at the local pub for lunch, at least not on this visit, but it’s called the Chequers, and has existed on the same spot since at least 1540.

A Walk With My Ancestors

On By chrisnickson2In Uncategorized4 Comments

Yesterday I took a walk with my family. To anyone who saw me, I was on my own, but my family was there – the ghosts of my father, my grandparents and great-parents. By the end even my great-great-great grandfather had joined us. They were showing me where they’d lived as I walked through Leeds, from Hunslet over into Cross Green and back down through what used to be called the Bank (properly Richmond Hill) and down to Marsh Lane.
It was a way to connect the threads, but far more, my chance to thank people I’d known and those who were dead long before I was born. They gave me Leeds. They set themselves here, coming down from New Malton back in the 1820s and they stayed.

It’s not a great dynasty. No mayors or distinguished citizens. Just people who got by, probably by the skin of their teeth. But a couple of the places where they lived are still standing. To walk up to these house, to have the voice whispering in my ear: ‘Do you see that room up there? That where me and me brothers all slept. It was freezing at night when we had to go down to the privy’ or ‘It were right there. You should have seen it, lad. A proud place was the Royal.’

Garton Street. East Park Road.
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The small fragment that’s the only remnant of Sussex St.

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The Allied Brewery that fills acres where the Royal Inn (where my maternal great-grandfather was the landlord) once stood on South Accommodation Road. St. Saviour, still there, still in use, where some of my relatives were married.

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And the space on Marsh Lane that was once, long ago, Garland Fold. By the time Isaac Nickson – the first of my family to live in Leeds, bringing his wife and children with him, to work as a butcher – lived there (where the 1841 census places him) the ‘fold’ (once a place for keeping sheep) was slums, one of the worst part of Leeds, where the police were afraid to walk on their own and where, after a heavy rain, the roads were ankle deep in mud and slime used to run down the walls of the cellars where the poor lived.

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And, by some synchronicity, or some guiding hand, or whatever, very close to where I had the home of my character Richard Nottingham, back in the 1730s. A kind of full circle, from my real family to what became my fictional family of sorts.

Completing the circle? I don’t know. But I am certain that this family walk was exactly that. We were never more than 15 minutes’ walk from the centre of Leeds, but it was a journey that managed to take in many lifetimes. It told me stories. It gave me a little more of my own history. I hope I haven’t exorcised them. I want them with me until I become just like them, my invisible family in Leeds.

Tomorrow: Gods of Gold

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

It’s been a long time coming, but tomorrow is the publication day for Gods of Gold (buy it, please!). Today, as the final teaser, how Tom Harper met Annabelle Atkinson:

She’d been collecting glasses in the Victoria down in Sheepscar, an old apron covering her dress and her sleeves rolled up, talking and laughing with the customers. He thought she must be a serving girl with a brass mouth. Then, as he sat and watched her over another pint, he noticed the rest of the staff defer to the woman. He was still there when she poured herself a glass of gin and sat down next to him.
‘I’m surprised those eyes of yours haven’t popped out on stalks yet,’ she told him. ‘You’ve been looking that hard you must have seen through to me garters.’ She leaned close enough for him to smell her perfume and whispered, ‘They’re blue, by the way.’
For the first time in years, Tom Harper blushed. She laughed.
‘Aye, I thought that’d shut you up. I’m Annabelle. Mrs Atkinson.’ She extended a hand and he shook it, feeling the calluses of hard work on her palms. But there was no ring on her finger. ‘He’s dead, love,’ she explained as she caught his glance. ‘Three year back. Left me this place.’
She’d started as a servant in the pub when she was fifteen, she said, after a spell in the mills. The landlord had taken a shine to her, and she’d liked him. One thing had led to another and they’d married. She was eighteen, he was fifty, already a widower once. After eight years together, he died.
‘Woke up and he were cold,’ she said, toying with the empty glass. ‘Heart gave out in the night, they said. And before you ask, I were happy with him. Everyone thought I’d sell up once he was gone but I couldn’t see the sense. We were making money. So I took it over. Not bad for a lass who grew up on the Bank, is it?’ She gave him a quick smile.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said.
‘So what brings a bobby in here?’ Annabelle asked bluntly. ‘Something I should worry about?’
‘How did you know?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘If I can’t spot a copper by now I might as well give up the keys to this place. You’re not in uniform. Off duty, are you?’
‘I’m a detective. Inspector.’
She pushed her lips together. ‘Right posh, eh? Got a name, Inspector?’
‘Tom. Tom Harper.’
He’d returned the next night, and the next, and soon they started walking out together. Shows at Thornton’s Music Hall and the Grand, walks up to Roundhay Park on a Sunday for the band concerts. Slowly, as the romance began to bloom, he learned more about her. She didn’t just own the pub, she also had a pair of bakeries, one just up Meanwood Road close to the chemical works and the foundry, the other on Skinner Lane for the trade from the building yards. She employed people to do the baking but in the early days she’d been up at four each morning to take care of everything herself.
Annabelle constantly surprised him. She loved an evening out at the halls, laughing at the comedians and singing along with the popular songs. But just a month before she’d dragged him out to the annual exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery.
By the time they’d arrived, catching the omnibus and walking along the Headrow, it was almost dusk.
‘Are you sure they’ll still be open?’ he asked.
‘Positive,’ she said and squeezed his hand. ‘Come on.’
It seemed a strange thing to him. How would they light the pictures? Candles? Lanterns? At the entrance she turned to him.
‘Just close your eyes,’ she said, a smile flickering across her lips. ‘That’s better.’ She guided him into the room at the top of the building. ‘You can open them again now.’
It was bright as day inside, although deep evening showed through the skylights.
‘What?’ he asked, startled and unsure what he was seeing.
‘Electric light,’ she explained. She gazed around, eyes wide. ‘Wonderful, eh?’ She’d taken her time, examining every painting, every piece of sculpture, stopping to glance up at the glowing bulbs. Like everything else there, she was transfixed by the light as much as the art. To him it seemed to beggar belief that anyone can do this. When they finally came out it was full night, the gas lamps soft along the street. ‘You see that, Tom? That’s the future, that is.’