Never heard of it? Probably not too surprisng, it’s not a name that trips easily off the tongue. These days it’s Lincoln Wing, part of St. James’ Hospital, the oldest part by far, as if it was built in the 1840s.

Back then, Burmantofts was countryside, with much cleaner air than in the centre of Leeds itself. The town – later a city – grew around it. It was put up with a lofty aim, to offer a better place for those children crammed in the old workhouse on Lady Lane a better place to grow up. Opened it 1848, it was home to 499 children, offering them a cleaner, airier, more salubrious place to grow up and training the trades that were intened to stop them ending up in the workhouse themselves. Garden, tailoring, domestic service, shaekaking, mining, dressmaking were all taught.

By the start of the 20th century, many of the children had been moved to to houses or normal streets, attending school in everyday clothes, instead of uniforms, and the opening of a children’s home on Street Lane removed the rest. Other had been placed in homes in Canada – not always happily – or, through religious charities with families in Whitby.

It would become the informary for the workhouse, then part of East Leeds Military Hospital during World War I.