Hunslet

Hunslet
Yorkshire West Riding
Former Printworks, now part of Leeds City College
Location
Grid reference:	SE311314
Location:	53°46’40"N, 1°31’50"W
Data
Population:	33,705  (2011)
Post town:	Leeds
Postcode:	LS10
Dialling code:	0113
Local Government
Council:	Leeds
Parliamentary constituency:	Leeds Central

Hunslet is an inner-city area in south Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is a mile south-east of the city centre and has an industrial past.

Many engineering companies were based in Hunslet, including John Fowler & Co. manufacturers of traction engines and steam rollers, the Hunslet Engine Company builders of locomotives (including those used during the construction of the Channel Tunnel), [Kitson & Co., Manning Wardle and Hudswell Clarke. Many railway locomotives were built in the Jack Lane area of Hunslet.

The area has a mixture of modern and 19th century industrial buildings, |terraced housing and 20th century housing. It is an area that has grown up significantly around the River Aire in the early years of the 21st century, especially with the construction of modern riverside flats. It was at one point the main production site for Leeds Creamware, a type of pottery (still produced) so called because of its cream glazing. Hunslet is now prospering as it follows the trend of Leeds generally and the expansion of office and industrial sites south of Leeds city centre.

Name

Hunslet is first mentioned as Hunslet (sic, for *Hunsflet) in the Domesday Book of 1086, though twelfth-century spellings of the name such as Hunesflete seem to be more conservative: the name appears originally to have meant 'Hun's creek', from an Anglo-Saxon personal name Hun (or Huna) and the Old English word flēot 'creek, inlet', probably referring to an inlet from the River Aire. The district of Hunslet Carr, whose name is first attested in the period 1175–89 as Kerra, includes the northern English dialect word carr, meaning 'bog' (borrowed into English from Old Norse kjarr, which had the same meaning, but more commonly "copsewood", "brushwood", "thicket"). Meanwhile, Hunslet moor is first mentioned in 1588.

History

The Hunslet Feast in 1850

The former Tetley's Brewery

At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, the manor of Hunslet belonged to the Lacys, from whom it passed to various families including the Gascoignes and the Neviles.

The brewers Joshua Tetley and Son set up business in Hunslet in 1822 producing beer and bitter today as part of Carlsberg Tetley group. However, in 2011 the brewery closed.

In 1823 forty working men from Hunslet raised the sum of £1 5s 1d which they sent to the radical publisher Richard Carlile who was serving a prison sentence in Dorchester gaol for the publications against the policies of the government of Lord Liverpool. The subscription was accompanied by a noble letter written by one of the contributors, William Tillotson.

The population of Hunslet grew rapidly in the first half of the 19th century becoming an important manufacturing centre. Several large mills were built for spinning of flax including Hunslet Mill, and there were chemical works, works for the manufacture of crown and flint glass, extensive potteries for coarse earthenware and the Leeds Pottery. Hunslet Mill, created between 1832 and 1842, is a Grade II listed building.

The gasholders at the Meadow Lane Gas Works

From 1898 to 1935, 25 acres here were occupied by the Leeds Steel Works, with four blast furnaces. This was the site of a major industrial accident in 1913, when a boiler explosion killed nine men. Thirteen years earlier, four men had died in a very similar explosion. By 1906 Hunslet was home to Leeds' second-largest gas works, the city's main rail goods yards, known at the time as Midland Goods Station (now the site of Crown Point Retail Park), as well as a large number of factories.

Hunslet was home to the first free public library in Leeds when a branch library opened on evenings from October 1870 in a room at the Hunslet Mechanics Institute. It became a day branch in 1912. On the 23rd February 1931 the new building was opened by the Rt. Hon. Arthur Greenwood P.C. MP and Minister for Health. The fixtures and fittings in the interior of the library, with an adult and junior reading room, were designed by Thomas Horsman and Co Ltd, costing £1,049 17s 6d}}. The building is now Hunslet Library and Community Hub.

The area was redeveloped in the 1960s, the main feature of this being the Hunslet Grange (Leek Street flats). In the 1980s it was again redeveloped, and in the 2000s, the area around the River Aire and Clarence Dock was redeveloped.

Hunslet Community Hub and Library

Hunslet Mills in the process of renovatation, 2021

Aire Park, a five-acre new public open space and redevelopment, is now being planned for the site surrounding The Tetley art gallery as part of the regeneration of the South Bank of Leeds.

Churches

St Mary the Virgin Church

A chapel dedicated to St Mary the Virgin was built in 1636, and enlarged in 1774. It was a brick structure with a tower. It was enlarged by subscription in 1826. There were two churches built on the site. The Victorian church, of which the spire remains, is the tallest in Leeds, was built in 1864 and the new church building surrounding it was built in the 1970s but was demolished in 2019.

Other smaller less notable churches exist in the district. The area is also home to St Joseph's Catholic Club (near a St Joseph's Catholic Church that was demolished in 2005 and is now part of the parish of St Margaret Clitherow).

Sport

• Rugby: Hunslet R.L.F.C.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Hunslet)

• Information on Hunslet  from GENUKI