What's happening in Beeston, Belle Isle, Cottingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Middleton and Stourton
Eric Smith, who has died aged 88, lived all his life in Leeds 11. A former teacher of French, member of Beeston Labour Party and the Leeds Gay Community Group, his major passion was transport, especially trams, trolleybuses and buses. Readers may remember his articles in South Leeds Life, where
A big ‘thank you’ to Ken Burton for his artle about Cranbrook House, 219 Beeston Road last month. I was immediately reminded of my parents’ life before I was born. I have a box stuffed with old photgraphs. It’s marked ‘Cranbrook Terrace / 217 Beeston Road / Leeds’ – Mam
I was very pleased to read in last month’s South Leeds Life that our MP, Hilary Benn, would like Leeds to have a tram system, and he makes a comparison with other cities that have one. This is an issue which goes back over thirty years to a time when,
On the cover of October’s South Leeds Life there was a great picture of a No 1 Beeston bus passing the top of Sunnyview Gardens, anticipating the return of the through service to north west Leeds which had been broken at the end of August last year. I started to
Introduction During the nineteenth century towns and cities developed with public transport systems operated by private individuals and companies. Early buses didn’t have rubber tyres and horses provided the motive power. Trams with steel wheels running on steel rails gave a better ride. On 16 September 1871 horses pulled the
It’s sixty years since the UK’s finest first-generation tram route closed. Elsewhere in the city few knew that it existed. In South Leeds in the ‘thirties, ‘forties and ‘fifties everybody knew it was there. They had nearly all been for a ride on it in one of the special trams,
Growing up in a city with a tramway network means that impressionable youngsters can be bitten by the tram bug! I was hooked before I was three, in 1940. It’s not uncommon. The French film maker Bernard Tavernier, of a similar age to me, in a newspaper interview told how
The Leeds Transport Historical Society is holding an evening stroll on Monday 13 July 2015 down part of the trackbed of the Middleton Tramway to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of its opening on 12 November 1925. The group will meet on the Ring Road Beeston Park at the junction with