be a nice and dainty town, polished off in all its fea- | Ichthyopolium (a very learned name for a fish-market), tures; and if it does not become so, it is not for want of plenty of words in the three hundred and ninetytwo clauses of this Act. However, unless the Act be an empty sound (which we are not in any way entitled to suppose), every year ought to see some improvement in the general condition of the town. THE STREETS, OLD AND NEW. The map of Leeds presents to us a town, in which, after crossing the main bridge, there is one street, the Briggate, before mentioned, of unusual width, running nearly north and south; two or three other north and south avenues, such as Vicar Lane, Albion Street, and Park Row; a few ancient thoroughfares running somewhat east and west, and bearing the names of Head Row, Kirkgate, Boar Lane, Swine Gate, and the Calls; an unaccountable number of small streets, lanes, and alleys, turning out of these in and new every direction; streets, of somewhat straighter character, bounding these older ones on all sides. · which, notwithstanding its great distance from the sea, was an Everything indicates that Briggate (which in our steel plate is shown as seen from the Bridge) is the street of the town-the heart and centre of the whole. The account given by Thoresby of the Briggate, at the time he wrote (about 1726), is curious ::-"In this spacious street, which from the bridge at the foot of it is called Bridge-Gate (or, in our northern dialect, which retains much of the Saxon, Briggate), stood many of the ancient borough houses, which to this day pay a certain burgage rent to the lords of the manor of Leeds. The famous Cloth Market, the life, not only of the town, but of these parts of England, is held in this street, sub dio, twice every week, viz., upon Tuesdays and Saturdays, early in the mornings. The Brig-end Shots' have made as great a noise amongst the vulgar, where the clothier may, together with his pot of ale, have a ' noggin o' poyrage,' and a trencher of either boyl'd or roast meat for twopence, as the market itself amongst the more judicious, where several thousand pounds worth of broad cloth are bought, and, generally speak-perly that the time had come for its removal, obtained ing, paid for (except the water-lengths, which cannot then be determined) in a few hours' time; and this with so profound a silence as is surprizing to strangers, who from the adjoining galleries, &c., can hear no more noise than the lowly murmurs of the merchant upon the Exchange of London. After the signal is given by the bell at the old chapel by the bridge, the cloth and benches are removed; so that the street is at liberty for the market-people of other professions, -as the country linendrapers, shoe-makers, hard-ware men, and the sellers of wood-vessels, wicker baskets, rushed chairs, flakes, &c. Fruit of all sorts are brought in so vast quantities, that Halifax, and other considerable markets, are frequently supplied from hence the mayor's officers have number'd five hundred loads of apples only, on one day." Carrying his attention further up the same wide avenue, away from the river, he continues:"Above the market for the milk cows is the an Act of Parliament, and collected the necessary funds for the removal of Middle Row. As the pigs and vegetables, and cows, and pots, and pans, and fish, were disturbed by this arrangement, a new market, called the 'Free Market,' was built for their accommodation, a little way to the east of the Briggate. The Cloth Market was removed from the Briggate many years before. 66 Mr. Kohl-whose rapid glances at English life show a singular compound of shrewd observation and hasty inference - gives Leeds a character which will be deemed by its indwellers anything but favourable. He says: England's manufacturing towns in general are by no means its most ornamental features; but among them all, Leeds is the very farthest from any such pretension, being, I verily believe, the most disagreeable place in the land. Other similar towns, as Birmingham, Manchester, &c., have at least, among the mass of chimneys, factories, and paltry houses of the labourers, here and there a news-room, a club, an Exchange, a bank, a railway-station, a statue in honour of Wellington or Nelson; but at Leeds there is hardly anything of the kind. The inns, too, are worse than in any other town in England. In the one to which I had been recommended as the best, I found the accommodation very indifferent. The coffee-room was always crowded with travellers, young or old, whose business at this emporium of woollen was either to buy or sell wool, yarn, cloth, blankets, plain worsted goods, white cloths, mixed yarn, flushing linen, or some similar matters; and who were as busy as bees, noting down their pounds, yards, and hundred-weights." A very decided judgment this, expressed in a very few words. But we might venture in all good faith to ask the German traveller, how many days he remained in Leeds, and what kind of weather greeted him during his sojourn there?—for this latter particular has a woeful effect on the colouring of the written pictures given by travellers. True it is (and the more rapidly the men of Leeds carry out their contemplated improvements, the better for the reputation of their town) that Leeds has few beauties to gladden the eye of a stranger; but Mr. Kohl jumped to his conclusion respecting the inns with a precipitancy scarcely worthy of his credit as an intelligent traveller. He puts up at an inn; he finds the coffee-room occupied by men busily interested in the staple manufacture of the town; he experienced a few uncomfortables which he does not explain to us; and forthwith he arrives at the startling proposition that "the inns are worse than in any other town in England." This is on a par with the elder Mathews's entry in Jonathan's note-book, that "in England, all waiters are called 'Tidy!'' OLD ST. PETER'S, AND ITS HISTORY. In describing such buildings of the town as present any notable features, we will begin with the churches, on account of the long and interesting history connected with St. Peter's, the mother church of Leeds. The history of this church is, in effect, an ecclesiastical history of the town; while the modern changes, in part introduced by the present vicar, Dr. Hook, have also their points of interest. Among the most remarkable of our local historians is Ralph Thoresby, who, in the beginning of the last century, wrote Vicaria Leodiensis, or 'A History of the Church at Leeds.' This purports to be a record of all the information which has been handed down, respecting the ecclesiastical history of Leeds, from the first establishment of a church in the town; together with memoirs of the successive vicars. Thoresby thinks it probable that there was a manse and church here during the Saxon Heptarchy; but it is at any rate clear that the Normans found a church at this place, when the preparatory enquiries for Domesday Book were made. By whom the Church was founded, or of what descriptian the fabric might have been, are matters not now determinable. In 1089, Baron Paganel founded a Benedictine Priory at York, and among the estates or property given to it were the "Church of St. Peter, at Leeds," and the "Chapel at Holbeck," which Holbeck is now one of the busy suburbs of Leeds; so that we have a clear record of the history of these places seven centuries and a half ago. The revenues of the church were divided, one-third for the vicar, and two-thirds for the priory; "by which means the church was deprived of two parts in three of its primitive revenues, by the avarice and sacrilege of the monks, who, in the conclusion, left the secular clergy to feed upon the crumbs that fell from the regulars' table, till the Bishops made a stand against the growing evil." In 1242, at the instance of one of the Bishops, a formal agreement was made between the Prior and the Vicar, respecting the partition of the revenues; but this did not obviate the necessity for a further arrangement in the next following century. Thoresby was able to search out a complete list of the Vicars of Leeds, from 1242 to 1715, with the dates at which they assumed the clerical duties of the town; and he has something to say concerning most of them. When Edward I., impoverished by his French wars, made a demand for one-half of the revenues of all the clergy, and, moreover, compelled them to call it a "free gift," the Vicar of Leeds occupied a notable place by the promptness of his contribution, and the consequent favours granted by the king. In 1311, the Countess of Lincoln gave up to the priory the advowson of the church at Leeds, which she seems to have held as a great landed proprietor in that neighbourhood. In 1453, William Scot gave a site for a house and garden for the Vicar's manse: this site was bounded by the Kirkgate on the south, and by the street now called Vicar's-lane on the west. William Eyre, who occupied the vicarage in 1470, founded the charity of St. Mary Magdalen, at Leeds. The Priory of Benedictines at York, before mentioned, having been suppressed by Henry VIII. in 1538, the vicarage of Leeds was given to Christ Church College, at Oxford, in reference (we presume) to certain revenues accruing from it; for the advowson was presented to one Thomas Culpeper. This advowson passed from hand to hand, by purchase and sale, until, in the reign of Elizabeth, it was purchased by the parishioners. Nineteen of the Vicars of Leeds had been instituted by the Priors at York; but Queen Elizabeth, designing to complete the Reformation, appointed Royal Commissioners to visit all the churches, with a view to regulate all theological matters. Leeds was among the number; and there is a curious document in existence, being an Agreement between the Commissioners and the then Vicar, Alexander Fassett, respecting the mode of conducting the service. One of the injunctions was, that the sacramental bread should be round and plain, without any figure on it, but somewhat broader and thicker than the cakes formerly prepared for the Mass, to be broken into two or more pieces. There is an entry in the accounts of the parish soon afterwards, for "Two thousand and an halff of breades, to serve the parish churches then in London, only four excelled the Leeds withall, 8s. 4d." New disputes having arisen concerning the revenues of the Church of Leeds, an arbitrator in 1596 gave an award, by which the tithes and other emoluments were divided between Christ Church College on the one hand, and the Vicar on the other. But no sooner was this matter settled, than a much more entangled question arose respecting the advowson: two ministers were presented at the same time by rival claimants to the advowson; and the celebrated Lord Bacon, as Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, was to decide between the parties, which he did in favour of the parishioners generally. Passing over the troubled period of Charles I., we find that in 1650 there was a project on foot to subdivide the populous parish of Leeds; to convert some of the chapels into parish churches, and to erect new ones at more convenient places, which were to be endowed out of the public purse. There were at that date two Churches in Leeds-the parish Church of St. Peter, and the Church of St John, which had recently been built and endowed at the sole expense of Mr. John Harrison, one of the inhabitants. St. John's was to form a second parish church, and was to have certain districts assigned to it as a parish; the chapelry of Hunslet, a small and poor one, was to constitute a parish; as was also the chapelry of Holbeck; Beeston was to form a parish; Wortley, Bramley, Armley, and Farnley, were together to form a parish; and Headingley and Allerton were to form a parish. This project does not seem to have been carried out. Thoresby continues his account of ecclesiastical matters, at Leeds, down to the year 1724. As the two churches of St. Peter and St. John became wholly inadequate to supply the wants of the inhabitants, the landowners and principal inhabitants raised a fund for building a new church and establishing a minister; and in 1721, the first stone of this new building was laid. Since Thoresby's time, the gradual extension of population in Leeds has led to the erection of a large number of new churches; while chapels, belonging to the various Dissenting bodies, have fully kept pace with those attached to the establishment. What may be the number at the present day, we cannot say ; but in 1839, there were forty churches and chapels within the town, affording sittings for nearly fifty thousand of the inhabitants. In the view of St. Peter's Church, as given by Thoresby, about 1720, we have a building evidently owing its form to the contributions of many successive ages. It was very oblong, with short transepts, and side aisles. The windows belonged to many different styles. In the Ducatus Leodiensis, Thoresby tells us that the old Church of St. Peter" is a very spacious and strong fabric, an emblem of the church militant, black but comely, being of great antiquity; it doth not pretend to the mode of Reformed Architecture, but is strong and useful." He states the length at 165 feet, breadth 97, height of the nave 51, and height of the tower 96. He further states, that among the 106 church in length; and that of two-thirds of the London churches, the length was less than the width of that which he was describing. The roof he describes as being "supported by three rows of solid pillars of the Gothic order. In the nave of the church are four aisles (which is one more than usual), which run from the cross aisle to the west end, where is a stately font: 'tis gilt and painted, and stands upon an ascent of three steps, surrounded with rails and banisters. The body of the church is very well pewed with English oak. .... Upon the north and east are spacious galleries of wainscot, wrought with variety of work. . . . . At the meeting of the great middle aisle, with the large cross aisle, the steeple is founded upon four prodigiously large pillars and arches. . . . . Against one of these pillars stood the pulpit in the days of yore, when there were no seats in the nave of the church; for before the Reformation there were no pews or different apartments allowed, but the whole body of the church was common, and the assembly promiscuous or intermixed in the more becoming postures of kneeling or standing. The patron of the church was the only layman who was permitted to have a seat within the bars or partition of the chancel from the nave of the church, in the time of Divine service. . . . This spacious quire was, in the days of darkness, cantoned into many distinct cells or chapels by several walls, as is evident by the breaches in the capitals and pedestals of the pillars." NEW ST. PETER'S, AND THE OTHER CHURCHES. The old structure-the venerable remnant of past ages, patched up from time to time, to maintain something like efficiency-was at length brought to the end of its days. It was pulled down in 1838. Consequent on certain ecclesiastical changes in the parish, a new St. Peter's Church was resolved on; and the architectural skill of Mr. Chantrell has been put in requisition to produce the new structure, which was finished in 1840. It is one of the best among the modern specimens of the pointed style-in that variety which is designated the later Decorated. The nave and the chancel are so planned as to form one clear vista, 160 feet in length, 28 wide, and 47 high. The side aisles are a little lower than the nave, and about 16 feet wide. A transept crosses between the nave and choir, having a tower at its north end; and there is a sort of additional north-aisle, which forms ante-chapels east and west of the tower. The altar is raised several feet above the level of the church, and is ascended by broad steps. The transept tower rises to a height of about 130 feet. Taken as a whole, this church is, both internally and externally, one of the greatest ornaments of the town. A bold and decided step has been taken, in great part through the instrumentality of the present vicar, Dr. Hook, to make the church arrangements of Leeds more conformable to the wants of a large and increasing population. The parish of St. Peter's was a very spa cious one; and the extremities grew out so far and wide from the mother church, that an efficient central control over the whole became difficult. Dr. Fawcett, the late vicar, died in 1837; the same year witnessed the election of Dr. Hook in his place; the next following year was marked by the pulling down of the old church, preparatory to building a new one. In 1839, the perpetual advowson of the vicarage of Leeds became vested in a body of trustees for the benefit of the parishioners the vicar being chosen on each vacancy by the trustees. In 1844, an Act of Parliament was obtained, sanctioning the division of the parish of Leeds into two or more parishes. The new church was opened in 1840, and the sittings, amounting in number to 1650, were all, with the exception of one pew, thrown open to the parishioners at large. This one parish contained in 1841 about 150,000 inhabitants, and about 21,000 acres of land; and it hence became desirable that such a large body of inhabitants should have more than one parish church: the remaining episcopal places of worship having more the character of chapels than churches. Arrangements were accordingly made in the Act for establishing the Parishes of St. Peter Leeds, St. John Leeds, St. George Leeds, Holy Trinity Leeds, St. Stephen Kirkstall, St. Mark Woodhouse, and Wortley. This list, however, by not means comprises all the churches of Leeds; the former parish of Leeds included the townships of Armley, Beeston, Bramley, Chapel Allerton, Farnley, Headingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Potter Newton, Oldcoates, Osmondthorpe and Wortley; and these, with the town of Leeds itself, contained, in 1844, twenty-one churches, besides the chapels belonging to the various Dissenting denominations. The church which John Harrison built in the reign of Charles I., and known as St. John's, appeared at a period when church architecture had fallen to a very low ebb. Whitaker, who was not indisposed to give all the credit he could to Leeds, found it difficult to apply any terms of praise to St. John's Church. He designates it a most unhappy specimen of taste, built in defiance of all authority and example, with two aisles only, having a single row of columns up the middle. The windows are copies of two distinct and rather remote periods; the tower is placed almost at one angle of the west end; the east end has two parallel windows of equal rank and consequence; there is no change or break in the arches to indicate a choir, in lieu of which a kind of clumsy screen is thrown across, so as to intersect one of the arches. "Let the architect sleep in peace," says the indignant Doctor. The Trinity Church, built about 1724, and endowed by a nephew of John Harrison, was the third of the Leeds churches-a sort of adaptation of the Doric style to the purposes of a Christian church. Seventy years afterwards, the Rev. Miles Atkinson provided no less a sum than £10,000 for building a fourth church -St. Paul's. The body of this church is a somewhat tame imitation of Greco-Roman examples, but the steeple is not without beauty. A fifth church, that of St. James', was built originally for and by Dissenters; but passed by purchase into the hands of the Establishment. A few of the modern churches are handsome structures; and some of them are distinguished for their large size: three of them will accommodate two thousand five hundred persons each. Perhaps the most striking of the modern places of worship, after new St. Peter's, is the Unitarian Chapel of Mill-Hill, (Cut, No. 3) opened at the end of 1848. It is a very elegant specimen of the perpendicular style. The chapel is divided in the interior into a nave and two aisles by columns and pointed arches. Owing to the peculiar form of the ground, there is a transept on one side only-the west. A small portion of the length is separated, at one end, by lofty arches and columns, to form a chancel and two vestries. The carved roof is open to the body of the chapel. Externally the details of the Perpendicular style are well carried out, and constitute it an ornament to the town. The chapel form instead of the church is developed in this particular-that there is no other steeple or tower than such as is formed by the pinnacled gable-end of the nave and transept. There is also a new and very handsome Independent Chapel in East Parade. THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS GENERALLY. The educational buildings of Leeds are of not much mark or feature as architectural ornaments. The wellwisher to the little denizens of the town hears with pleasure of the day-schools, the factory-schools, the infant-schools, the Sunday-schools, and industrialschools; many of which are not the less useful for being situated in nooks and corners, where external adornment is out of the question. There is one school, however, whose recent erection and architectural beauty claim for it a marked superiority over all the others. This is the Industrial School, situated in Burmantofts, and opened in 1848. The grounds occupy six acres, and the ground and the building are said to have cost no less than £16,000. The building belongs to the (once and again) popular Elizabethan style. There is a front of great length, nearly 300 feet, with a highlyenriched centre, comprising bay windows, octagonal turrets, triangular parapets and gables, ornamental chimneys, and the other characteristics of the style. The sides, back front, and contiguous buildings, are all in architectural harmony with the principal front. The building is so arranged as to furnish school-rooms for four hundred scholars, besides kitchens, diningrooms, chapel, dormitories, wash-house, laundry, tailor's shop, shoemaker's shop, store-rooms, master's residence, teachers' apartments, &c.-all on a very complete scale. With respect to the schools for the middle classes, they have the usual stamp of brick-and-mortar "respectability;" but Leeds is not without some of those ancient establishments whose history is interesting, whether the fabric be gorgeous or humble. The chief of these is the Grammar School. This school owed its origin to the Rev. William Sheafield, who, in 1551, bequeathed certain estates to trustees," to the use and for the finding sustentation and living of one honest and substantial learned man, to be a schoolmaster, to teach and instruct freely all such young scholars, youths, and children, as shall come and resort to him from time to time: to be taught, instructed, and informed, in such a school-house as shall be found, erected, and builded, by the parishioners of the said town and parish of Leeds." The townsmen purchased a site, and built a school-room; and bequests and purchases at subsequent periods gradually raised the annual income of the charity (which in 1553 was worth only £4 13s. 4d. annual rental) to a considerable sum. One of the bequests, made by Sir William Ermystead in 1555, was contingent on the school being made open to "all such as shall repair thereto, without taking any money more or less for teaching, saving of one penny of every scholar, to enter his name in the master's book, if the scholar have a penny; and if not, to enter and to continue freely without paying." The number of scholars is usually about a hundred; they have a title to compete for one of Lady Betty Hastings' Exhibitions at Queen's College, Oxford, and four scholarships at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Leeds has a fair sprinkling of libraries and literary societies. One of the libraries, founded by Dr. Priestley about eighty years ago, is one of the most extensive in the north of England, and occupies a room of great beauty and magnitude. Most of the others are of small extent. The Philosophical and Literary Society, the Literary Institution, and various other institutions for the cultivation of literature, science, and the fine arts, hold their respective meetings periodically, and exert their usual refining influence on such of the inhabitants as can avail themselves of such advantages. The Philosophical Hall, where lectures are delivered and museum curiosities deposited, is a handsome structure in Park Row, and has been the scene of many pleasant meetings of an intellectual character. The Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens, situated at Headingley, north-west of the town, were opened in 1840. They occupy a slight hollow between rising grounds, and have been laid out with much taste, and at a considerable expenditure. But, alas! Fortune has frowned on the scheme. Whether the gardens are too far away from the people, or the people are indifferent to the gardens, or the proprietors expended too much money, or require too large an interest on the money actually laid out, whatever may be the cause, these gardens have recently become private property, to be attached, as pleasure-grounds, to a neighbouring mansion; so that it depends on the liberality of the new proprietor to give or withhold public access to the |
