Report 6th Feb

FORUM MEETING 6 FEBRUARY 2018 The Chairman welcomed a good number of members on a snowy day. He mentioned the 100th Anniversary of women over 30 gaining the vote and the 66th Anniversary of the Queen’s Accession. He then told a good joke involving the Queen Mother and Fokker Aircraft. 4 Forum members had attended Ray Snowden’s funeral which had been a celebration of his life and Malcolm Wood showed a photograph of Ray in typical form at Ascot House enjoying a knickerbocker glory. The popular Alun Pugh returned “to augment my pension” with his Illustrated History of Leeds. In an hour he showed us some of the familiar buildings still standing from the city’s past including the Minster,St. John’s Church, Kirkstall Abbey, the waterfront warehouses now apartments, Temple Newsam (founded by the Knight’s Templar) and the Egyptian-style mill. Other important landmarks in the city’s history have long since gone, such as Leeds Manor House, the Moot Hall in the middle of Briggate and the Coloured Cloth Hall for the textile trade which made Leeds important. In general much more has survived south of the main railway line than north of it. Until 1700 Leeds was insignificant in comparison with York but the Aire and Calder Navigation, the coming of steam power developed in the city by Matthew Murray and the railways led to rapid growth but also massive pollution. Charles Dickens called Leeds “the nastiest place I know”. The grand Town Hall of the 1850s opened by Queen Victoria showed anew civic pride and Roundhay Park was bought for the city to give the working population somewhere to relax and exercise. Alun finished his talk around 1905 with the building of Kirkgate Market, the shopping arcades and the opening of City Square. Malcolm Wood, himself a Leeds “loiner”, origin of the phrase unknown even to our speaker, gave the vote of thanks to our speaker on behalf of 38 members who showed by their applause how much they had enjoyed the talk.