What's happening in Beeston, Belle Isle, Cottingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Middleton and Stourton
A horrid murder took place in Leeds in July 1840 and so far, no progress has been made towards solving it. The unfortunate victim was one William Reynolds Rotheray of about 20 years of age and a dealer in rags who resided alone in a house on Holbeck Lane. William
Leeds New Station was given Royal Assent in 1865 and it opened to traffic in 1869 and was situated off New Station Street and roughly occupied the area where Platforms 9 to 17 at the present station are situated. This station was designed by Thomas Prosser the architect for the
The Beecroft girls, Ada aged 6 years and Annie aged 4 years, were the illegitimate daughters of Thomas Mellor. Their mother Ada Beecroft, had been committed to the Menston Asylum at Guiseley where she died in November 1899. Some time before Ada’s death Mellor had moved in with another woman
John Fowler was born on 11 July 1826 at Melksham, Wiltshire, his father also called John Fowler was a wealthy Quaker merchant who married Rebecca Hull and together they had three daughters and five sons of whom John was the third son. John Fowler Junior appeared to be a normal
In August 1918 a woman, Annie Mayne, aged 29 was murdered. Annie Mayne was married to Charles Washington Mayne but after eight years the marriage broke up after she was found in bed with Ben Hindle Benson and he took no further interest in her life; he moved into another
The Hunslet Engine Company was founded in 1864 and the workshops were built on a plot of land on which had been the locomotive works of EB Wilson & Co and named the Railway Foundry. The buildings had been pulled down and not withstanding the fact that there were already
Matthew Murray is believed to have been born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1765 but little is known of his early life. His father, when he reached the right age had him apprenticed to a Smith, more probably a Millwright or a Mechanic in his native town. He married a girl, Mary
John Blenkinsop was a Mining Engineer and Steam Locomotive designer who was born at Felling, near Gateshead, County Durham. When he was old enough he was apprenticed to his cousin, John Straker, the Coal Viewer for Charles John Brandling’s Felling Colliery. Brandling lived at Tilling, County Durham; and he married
The public water supply was not really suitable for brewing beer until the 1860s when Leeds Corporation began to bring supplies from the Washburn Valley north of Otley, but beer was to remain a major item in most domestic budgets for at least the first half of the 19th century.
The Elmore Copper Works, or as it was known locally, Elmore’s, was originally established at the end of the 1880s with the works being built on the Haigh Park Estate between Stourton and the River Aire. This land was formerly part of Rothwell Haigh in the Parish of Rothwell and