Community Spirit - Morris Men

Following successful contact with the Briggate Morris Dancers, I can now report that these three are from Leeds Morris Men and from left to right are Rob, Joe and Simon.

Leeds Morris Men was founded in 1950 and there's a grand page on their website on how to distinguish them from other sides (yes, there is a collective name for Morris Men). They use the colours of The University of Leeds, white, burgundy and green and the crossed sash/ribbon is known as a baldric.

They perform most Thursday evenings throughout the summer at different pubs and the full programme can be found on their website. This week its the Howden Arms at Tadcaster and The Greyhound at Saxton.

Rob, Joe and Simon were stitched by Merel Jackson (6 1/2 hours) on printed fabric. The embroidery was scanned before the edges were turned over - hence the black outline. Quite often the edges of the pieces were finished off by other volunteers but I suspect that Merel will have done this one herself. She and Shirley Gale were the chief finishers and 'stitchers-down'. A better view of the image can be got by clicking on it.

Leeds in Bloom - The Queens

The Queen's Hotel, on the south side of City Square was built in 1937, from the design of architect to the London Midland and Scottish Railway, WH Hamlyn. It is faced with white Portland stone at the front but the sides and rear are brown brick.

Interesting fact: Portland Cement is often cited as being invented by a Leeds man Joseph Aspdin (1778-1855). Should he be included as one of the forgotten ones?

As a devotee of Art Deco I remember visiting the hotel (penniless) in the 1970s just to see the lift. The building has had a major refurbishment recently but the 1930s features have been retained. I didn't know, until reading it in the link, that The Queens was the first hotel in Britain to have en-suite bathrooms to all rooms and the last of the railway hotels to be in public ownership.




This is another huge piece of embroidery, chartered by Val Lloyd and stitched in blackwork by Audrey Gabbitas. Audrey spent 437 hours on the work and calculated that she had made at least 345,000 stitches. It was quite a job to scan this for the records.


Some of the volunteers didn't necessarily embroider. There were all sorts of other jobs to be done including making tea at workshops, keeping the materials sorted and stitching the individual pieces to the panels. Shirley Gale was one of these people but she also found time to do some needleweaving.