Millennium Embroideries

I've been told about another community embroidery in Marston Magna. Noted but I haven't an image yet

Faith in the City - St Paul's, Ireland Wood

St. Paul's is a relatively modern and distinctive church building. Built in 1965 it is eight-sided with a crowning cupula containing the bell and was designed by Geoffrey Davy of Kitson, Parish, Legard & Pyman. It stands just below the highest point of the City of Leeds.

Mary Mawson (7 March 1917-March 2004)
Mary worked on every panel except the last which was put together during the last 2 years of her life. She joined us in 1993 and almost immediately became a great enthusiast. She felt her ambition to go to Art School was met to a great extent by participating in the workshops, master classes and skill-sharing sessions which were part of the process of making the tapestry.
Always full of courage, creativity and initiative she was never phased by the challenge of a difficult piece of work. She was also tireless in spreading the word about the Tapestry and persuaded her former employer, Peacocks, to sponsor the Textile and Industrial Heritage panel. She also raised funds for Ireland Wood and Adel churches to appear on the Faith panel.
She was a very familiar face at the group sessions where we stitched the embroidered sections onto the backcloth - travelling first to the workshops at Kate's house, then to Armley Mills and finally to Holy Trinity Church on Boar Lane where the majority of the Panels were completed. Mary hand stitched this piece using long and short stitch with french knots.

Textile and Industrial Heritage - Murray's Engine

OK, this is where I get very confused and hope that someone like Kris will help out.

This is a model of the prototype engine built by Mathew Murray in 1812. It seems to have the cogged wheel missing, so presumably is the forerunner of the Rack and Pinion loco described a couple of days ago?

The model is kept at Armley Mills, where for several years the Tapestry panels in progress were worked on by the volunteers. The Burling and Mending room was set aside for the work and there were many workshops with leading embroiderers of the time.

The embroidery was hand stitched, including french knots, by Jan Brown in 40 hours

Textile and Industrial Heritage - Leeds 1715

In tandem with the previous post.

“Prospect of Leeds from the Knostrop Hill” c.1715 which appeared in Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis. In the centre are Alderman Atkinson’s domed roof house, Call Lane Chapel and the Parish Church of St Peter. On the hill is St John’s Church. In 1740 the population was estimated as being 10,638.

Angela Turner hand stitched this piece in 100 hours.

On the Move - Cossin's Map 1730

'A New & Exact PLAN of the Town of LEEDES' by John Cossins published in 1730.

In 1993 Sothebys offered for sale a notebook written by John Cossins. It contained notes on his maps of Scarborough, York and Leeds and also a list of the people who subscribed to those maps. This was bought by the City Archivist for York. Originally 138 people subscribed in Leeds to 192 copies; only one copy is now accessible, in Leeds City Museum. It has been suggested that Thoresby was instrumental in hiring Cossins, and a copy of the map is kept at the Thoresby Society.

I don't think any of the houses shown in the margins are still standing, or any of the buildings on the map. St Peter's was rebuilt in 1838. BUT is the White Cloth Hall on the map the same building which is currently shored up with scaffolding in Kirkgate?

Joan Holah spent 100 hours hand stitching on this printed fabric. It's fabulous.

On the Move - Rack and Pinion Loco

One of the few pieces on the Tapestry which we have detailed information about.

"This is the world's first commercially successful steam locomotive, which began work on Wednesday 24th June 1812 on the waggonway between Middleton Colliery and Leeds.
Four of these locomotives were built for the colliery owner Charles John Brandling, by the famous engineer Matthew Murray, at his Round Foundry in Water Lane, Holbeck.
They incorporated a cogged wheel which gripped on to a cogged rail, an invention patented by John Blenkinsop, Mr. Brandling's manager at Middleton. This system enabled the locomotive, which weighed less than 5 tons, to heave along about 30 waggons of coal, sometimes weighing over 100 tons in total, without breaking the brittle cast-iron rails then in use. A man named George Stephenson saw an identical locomotive start work near Newcastle in 1813: his own first locomotive copied most of it, but omitted the cogged wheel and, therefore, was not nearly as strong as the Leeds locomotives.
Between 1812 and 1835, people from France, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, Russia, and the U.S.A. are known to have seen the Leeds locomotives at work and later tried to interest their own countrymen in the building of steam railways.
The Hunslet area adjoining the railway was later at the centre of Leeds' important locomotive-building industry.
The Middleton Railway has other claims to fame: in 1758, its route agreements were ratified by the first railway Act of Parliament and,
over two hundred years later, in June 1960, it became the first standard-gauge railway with services operated entirely by volunteer preservationists.
Steam trains still run on the historic Middleton Railway, maintained and operated by the volunteers of the Middleton Railway Trust Museum."

Information supplied by Sheila Bye (Historian/Archivist, Middleton Railway Trust Museum)

The piece was hand stitched by Lesley Dove

On the Move - the Transport Panel

The panel was made between 1995 and 2000 and was first exhibited at the Civic Hall during a reunion event of the Leeds Swordfish Appeal.

At that time the Tapestry workshop was at Holy Trinity Church and Kate and Betty thought it would save time and money to carry the panel through the streets of Leeds rather than hiring transport. Someone took a photograph of this and it appears on the Community Spirit Panel.

The background is made up of maps of Leeds illustrating it's growth from hamlet to town to city. Overlaying these are the various modes of transport including road, rail, water and air.