Education -Panel and Leeds Grammar School

There were several false starts in the design of the Education Panel but the revised format was ready to go in 1999. The style of the panel reflects the more formal style of the Health Panel, monochrome buildings suggesting that they are the housing for education and the people in glorious technicolour the product and life of the education process.



Leeds Grammar School may have been founded as early as 1341 but it's foundation is usually taken as 6th July 1552, dating from the will of William Sheafield. In 1624 John Harrison provided a new building on North Street (near the site of the Grand Theatre) where the school stayed until 1859 and its move to the new building in Clarendon Road. Rev. Alfred Barry was headmaster at the time and the buildings were designed by his brother (Their father designed the Houses of Parliament). This embroidery shows the architects elevation of the new school built in the 1990s at Alwoodley Gates. Mr Collins was head at the time of that move. When the panel was made the school was for boys only. Now, with the name changed to The Grammar School at Leeds, the girls from Leeds Girl's High School have joined them.


The straight lines of the architect's elevation were very difficult to maintain in embroidery. Several attempts at hand and machine embroidery were thwarted by kinks and bends where none should be. Finally the effect was achieved using couching - lines of cotton perle across the surface of the printed fabric with tiny stitches holding them down.


The original plan for the Education Panel had been more in the style of the Community Spirit panel with crowds of students spilling from the buildings. These pieces were embroidered for the earlier design by Mary Mellor and Ann Barker. So far they have not been used but are beautiful, and ready when someone else takes up the challenge to create more panels.

Local Faces - John Harrison (1693-1776)

During the run up to the Millennium there was a lot of press coverage devoted to the great and the good of Yorkshire. Two men named John Harrison frequently cropped up in these articles.

Both lived over 300 years ago so images of them are scarce and somehow the John Harrison born in Foulby, near Wakefield, has managed to settle himself at a table with the Leeds worthies on the Local Faces panel.

The clue is in his hand. It was only a matter of time before we could link him to Leeds.

The piece was hand stitched by Betty Bertrand

Faith in the City - St John's Church

Two views of St John's Church, one at street level in needlepoint by Patricia Andrews (260 hours) and the other hand painted and stitched by Gill Cook (no hours recorded). James Brown, who makes the pictorial maps of Leeds, designed the aerial perspectives of the churches on the Faith Panel.

When John Harrison had this church built in 1631-4, entirely at his own expense, the Archbishop of York at first refused to consecrate it. He was one of the clergy who wanted to get back to the elaborate ceremonies of Roman Catholicism and suspected Harrison of puritanism.

Leeds Daily Photo Blog visited the interior last year. I'm ashamed to say I've not been inside the building which apparently includes work by the woodcarver Francis Gunby who was also involved in the contemporary remodelling of Temple Newsam House. Now on the to do list.

Faith in the City - John Harrison (1579-1656)

The fourth Leeds worthy represented in City Square is John Harrison. He appears on the Faith Panel as a member of the Pious Uses Committee, set up in 1619 to administer local charities, some of which still benefit the people of Leeds today.

He was a cloth merchant and landlord who used the rents from his properties to help in building St John's Church and the second (?) Grammar School (on a site between North Street and The Grand Theatre), replacing the building at the top of Lady Lane.

A favorite story about him is that he cut holes in the doors and ceilings of his home to allow his cats free access around the house - is this one of the earliest records of cat-flaps? Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) has also been cited with this invention.

There is a John Harrison on the Local Faces panel, born near Wakefield in 1693. On the face of it he shouldn't be represented, but more of him later.

I'd completely forgotten that when we went to see the statue it was just after Jeans for Genes Day and we had to ask a workman to remove Mr Harrison's jeans before taking the photograph.

Janet Taylor hand and machine embroidered this piece on printed fabric.