Faith in the City - Leeds Parish Church

The parish church of Leeds by RD Chantrell for Dr Walter Farquhar Hook, who was vicar from 1837 until 1859. It replaced the medieval church at a cost of £30,000.

The exhibition for Woodbine Willie celebrates 100 years since his ordination as a priest there.

During a diocesan reorganisation in the late C19 the church was denied cathedral status, a fact that historically would have prevented Leeds from becoming a city but the link with Anglican dioceses was broken in 1889 when Birmingham successfully petitioned for city status on the grounds of its large population and history of good local government. So, instead, the church is affectionately known as Leeds Parish Church within the diocese of Ripon and Leeds.

When Pevsner wrote about the building in 1959 he was not enthused by the fact that the railway, in 1869, had cut the church off from the town 'so effectively that it seems to stand at a half-commercial, half-derelict dead end'. We may have all grumbled when the loop route was conceived and in place but at least it made the church more visible and seemingly more accessible to the people of Leeds.

The embroidery was hand painted to the design of James Brown and hand stitched by Joyce James.

LS2000 - Crown Point Bridge

We all take bridges for granted getting from one side of the River Aire to the other but in the nineteenth century it wasn't so easy.

In April 1840 an Act of Parliament was obtained to build this bridge to relieve the growing pressure on Leeds Bridge (at that time an old and many times widened stone structure) at the eastern edge of central Leeds. Designed by the Bradford engineer George Leather Jnr., the 120 feet wide, single span iron bridge was constructed with castings made at Park Iron Works in Sheffield.

The bridge was built at a cost of £36,000 and officially opened as a toll bridge in July 1842. The toll was abolished in March 1868.

George Leather Jnr, as engineer to the Aire and Calder Navigation, was also responsible for rebuilding the Victoria Bridge three or four years earlier after the timber bridge on the spot had been swept away in a great flood. The cost of the stone structure was a mere £8,000. A much smaller bridge or was stone cheaper than iron?

Joyce James hand stitched this piece on printed fabric. The earlier pieces of printed fabric were produced by a commercial firm but this is one of those done by the volunteers with a domestic ink-jet printer, using iron-on transfer paper.

Local Faces - Leonora Cohen (1873-1978)

After the last link I thought I'd better add Leonora Cohen. The people on the local faces were embroidered in colour if still living and monochrome if deceased. The men far outnumber the women in the deceased category so we could really have done with knowing about Vera Leigh in the planning stage.

Leonora Throp was born in 1873. Against both families wishes she married Mr Cohen who was Jewish and both husband and son were very supportive of her political activities. One of Leeds Suffragettes' most prominent activists she campaigned long and hard for enfranchisement and organized mass meetings on Woodhouse and Hunslet Moors. She achieved notoriety in 1912 by throwing an iron bar through a jewel case in the Tower of London and was, for a time, bodyguard to Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst. At the height of the suffragette movement Leonora was briefly imprisoned in Armley Jail, having thrown a brick through a window when Asquith was speaking and there she went on hunger strike. In 1923 Mrs Cohen became the first woman president of the Leeds Trades Council. She was also a magistrate. She retired to North Wales and died there aged 105.

Abbey House Museum holds a collection of Leonora Cohen memorabilia. As well as pamphlets, correspondence and news-cuttings, the collection includes a dress designed by Mrs Cohen in Suffragette colours which she wore at an Arts Club Ball in 1922.

The Leeds City Museums blog also has an interesting reference to Mrs Cohen.

The embroideries were hand stitched by Karen Pattison, Barbara Gray, Joan Holah and Joyce James

Local Faces - Owl

Keeping Dean Hook company on a balcony is the owl, one of the symbols of the City. When the completed panels were displayed at Harewood House there was a competition to count the number of owls represented on the Tapestry.

There is now an owl trail in Leeds


This particular bird was hand stitched by Joyce James

Local Faces - Market Roof

Joyce James hand embroidered this piece showing the market roofs in Leeds.

The Market is a fantastic building which can still be seen on the skyline despite the increasing number of high rise buildings in the city. There's another representation of the building on the LS2000 panel.

Many of the older people of Leeds grieve that the Market isn't what is was 'in the old days' but with the advent of supermarkets most choose to use these instead of the weekly trip into town.

The frontage, built in 1904, was saved after a fire swept through the market in December 1975.
There are photographs of this disaster on the Leodis website
http://www.leodis.net