The Meadow Lane Memorial

At the Leeds Bridge end of Meadow Lane, beside the forecourt of a petrol station, stands a stone tablet upon which is affixed a commemorative plaque.  Although it does not refer to Beeston, it provides interest for those who can make the connection.
Over the years Meadow Lane has seen many changes, not least in recent times.  Even the line of the road has been altered towards the Leeds Bridge end and it has been widened beyond recognition since the days when Beeston Bar, the toll gate on the turnpike route through Beeston to Morley and beyond, stood there.
There were houses, of course, some of them buildings of importance, for this was an important road leading to the junction with Hunslet Lane which is now reduced to the rank of a bus bay.  Here all traffic from south of the river was funnelled towards the only bridge over the River Aire.  At the close of the seventeenth century, when Thomas Kitchingman chose to build a house near here, it was also a desirable place to live.  His house was behind the petrol station where Tetley's boundary fence now stands.
So, what of the link with Beeston?  Well, as you may read in 'The Manor of Beeston', Thomas Kitchingman was the man who became Lord of the manor of Beeston upon the purchase of Beeston Hall, Cottingley Hall and Stank Hall in 1712.  There are two plaques on the stone tablet; the inscriptions are reproduced in full here:

MATERIALS OF THIS MEMORIAL ARE FROM THE HALL WHICH STOOD AT THE CORNER OF HUNSLET LANE AND SOUTH BROOKE STREET.  IT WAS BUILT BY ALDERMAN THOMAS KITCHINGMAN, MAYOR OF LEEDS IN 1688 AND 1705.  ALDERMAN JOHN BROOKE WHO WAS MAYOR IN 1736 AND 1754, AND OTHER 'LEEDS WORTHIES' LIVED THERE.

ON 23rd JANUARY 1643 A 'SCONCE' RAISED IN THIS VICINITY BY ROYALIST SOLDIERS UNDER SIR WILLIAM SAVILE WAS STORMED BY THE PARLIAMENTARIANS WITH SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX, WHO  OCCUPIED THE TOWN.

THE RIVER OVERFLOWED IN OCTOBER 1775 AND FEBRUARY 1795 AND ON THE 16th NOVEMBER 1866 WATER WAS ABOUT 2 FEET DEEP ON THIS SITE. IN 1872 THE 14th CENTURY FOUR ARCH STONE BRIDGE WAS REPLACED.

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ERECTED IN 1933 BY THE ANGLO-AMERICAN OIL COMPANY LIMITED AND UNVEILED BY THE LORD MAYOR, ALDERMAN R H BLACKBURN JP.

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THIS PLAQUE WAS UNVEILED BY THE LORD MAYOR OF LEEDS COUNCILLOR ALAN S PEDLEY DFC ON OCTOBER 2nd 1975, AFTER RE-SITING

Putting Beeston on the world time line

Some 500 years ago Christopher Columbus at last raised the necessary sponsorship and in 1492, as every schoolchild knows, began his epic voyage across the Atlantic.  At just about the same time in a little valley in the north of England there was a group of men busily cutting down trees for the construction of a farm building.  It has absolutely no relevance to their adventure but, though the Santa Maria, the Nina and the Pinta certainly required far more timber than the farm building, in our own Beeston, Stank Barn remains; Columbus's ships can only be seen in replica.
Until 1985 Stank Barn was thought to be the oldest complete building in Beeston (though there are a few Norman stones in the fabric of our parish church of St Mary.)  However, lurking a few yards outside Beeston parish boundary but within its manorial territory was another piece of our heritage awaiting rediscovery at Cad Beeston.
Clothed in brickwork and appearing for all the world like a typical ramshackle Victorian terrace row, this building faced demolition and might so easily have been lost to us had not its ancient beams been recognised for what they were, the timber frame of a fifteenth century manor house; and it is older by some seventy years than eve Stank Barn.
Not everyone knew of the existence of Stank Barn before its superb refurbishment (in fact, even now I meet  Beeston fold who ask me of its whereabouts); and no one at all had the slightest inkling of knowledge about Cad Beeston Manor House.  It might just have vanished from the face of the earth.
These two buildings are visible remains of our Beeston heritage; one being virtually re-discovered when recognition of its importance as a tangible historical document in wood and stone brought a halt to decay and made essential restoration a priority; the other being re-discovered in the full sense of the word to survive the threat of complete destruction and regain its former glory.
Yet a community's heritage is much more than its old buildings.  Memories and the written word are very much a part of history.
Parish records are usually available for study and this is something that can be undertaken on the amateur level by anyone with interest, enthusiasm and time to spare.  One of our members has delved into the Beeston Parish Register to good effect.  The Leeds Reference and Local History Library can also provide resources for those who wish to follow a line of research.
Such records sit quietly filed and forgotten until someone takes the trouble to seek them out.  Memories are more ephemeral.  There is need for people's stories to be set down while they are still fresh, for memories passed from mouth to mouth become modified and fade/  Indeed they can be forgotten within the lifetimes of those whose memories they are because if no one takes the trouble to seek them out they remain the property of a small and unfortunately diminishing band of folk.  Memories, just as much as ancient manor houses, need to be re-discovered or they may be lost forever.
The Beeston Local History Society is not a lone operator.  It is just one of a large body of similar groups beavering away throughout the land in search of their roots.  But members have maintained their efforts in a practical way here in Beeston for nearly ten years now and hope to continue into the foreseeable future.  These pages are the latest fruit of their activities.
The book may hopefully provide an interesting read but, like its three predecessors, it also helps to preserve a resource that is so easily lost.  We will be satisfied if you take as much pleasure in rediscovering this selection of your local heritage as we have had in bringing it to you.

The Heart of Old Beeston

There are Beestoners and Beeston Linnets.  Annie Benge is a Beestoner.  She brings to these pages a lifetime of experience that only one born and bred in Beeston can tell and in the process explains the difference between those two qualifications.
Readers may be interested to have some background knowledge as to what old Beeston was like before most of the old property was demolished by Leeds Corporation in the 1950s - a heartbreaking time for many old people who had to be re-housed in other parts of Leeds/
From 1901 to 1917 my father, a shoe repairer, occupied a small wooden lock-up shop (one of four shops) which were sited where now is the frontage of the working men's club.  In 1917 he moved to 3 Town Street / 5 Webster Fold, a shop formerly occupied by Mr Roberts, a tailor.  From 1917 to 1956 father carried on as a shoe repairer.  In 1956 this property was demolished and during the last few years there he attended to Leeds United football boots and running shoes.
These stone-fronted cottages ran from Old Lane to Town Street.  The electricity sub-station was built in what used to be a farmyard and was just behind the first cottage - the sub-station still stands, although clad in new brickwork to form a bridge in the passageway beside the Co-op.  The farmyard belonged to Mrs "Farmer Wood who lived on the other side of Old Lane in a little white-washed cottage below the level of the road.
When I was a small child in our early days at No.3, stables adjoined our shop and ran parallel with Town Street.  I well remember hearing the horses stamping and neighing when things were quiet at night.  These stables were set back a little from Town Street and were hidden from the street by hoardings.
The hoardings and stables were pulled down in the 1920s when Beeston Picture House was built, and later a garage and billiards hall covered most of the old farmyard site.  A row of lock-up shops between our shop and the Picture House completed the development.  Before the farmyard and stables disappeared, in the farmyard was a garage for a Crawford's Biscuits delivery van.
In Roger Row, off Town Street at the far end of the Co-op, a woman and her son used to make brushes.  In front of Roger Row was Amblers Printing Works, a small family business with house adjoining and a pretty garden;  I well remember as a small child a summer-house with rambler roses climbing round it.  I believe there was originally a large farmhouse somewhere near Amblers and a pond near Back Lane.
Parallel to St Anthony's Drive was Taylor's Laundry, approached from Mill Fold.  At the junction of Old Lane and Town Street were two red brick cottages and hoardings.  One cottage faced Webster Fold Cottages and was occupied by Paddy Mills who for years was caretaker and bell ringer at St. Anthony's Church.
Beeston was well served by a variety of good private shops- and even had two Co-ops!  Leeds Co-op and Butcher's Shop was beyond the White Hard and Beeston Co-op was opposite Beeston Hall which was where the Oldroyd Estate is now situated.
Public services included a good and frequent tram service.  This was a railway station and a Police Station opposite the old school with policemen who walked their beats - no patrol cars then.
Churches and chapels swerved our religious needs.  Beeston Parish Church of St Mary replaces an earlier building ad was reconsecrated in 1886; this has been a religious site since at least the thirteenth century.  St Anthony's Church in Old Lane was built in 1904 to give a permanent home for Roman Catholicism in the village.  There was a Methodist Chapel in Chapel Fold until the new Chapel was built in Town Street, the foundation stone of which was laid on Whit Tuesday, 1865, and the chapel opened on 30th July 1866.  The Primitive Methodist Chapel was almost opposite Beeston School and I seem to remember it being in use in 1945.
The Methodist Cricket and Tennis clubs were in a field behind Ivy Cottage, Town Street and alongside Back Lane opposite what is now Thackray's.  The 1939-1945 war put an end to this.  Much of the social life centred round the churches and chapels, their dramatic societies, concerts, guilds, socials, etc.
To be called an Old Beestoner one must have been born here.  A Beeston Linnet is one who was born in the old village, beyond Old Lane.  I am an Old Beestoner but do not qualify to be a Linnet.  I wonder how many readers can say they are true Beestoners - or even Beeston Linnets!

The Manor of Beeston

Sadly, Beeston's old manor house no longer remains, Frank Goddard takes a brief glance at its history.
In the Domesday Survey Beeston is mentioned as part of Ilbert de Lacy's lands.  Leeds had several manors and presumably Beeston and possibly Cad Beeston were two of these.  In the twelfth century the Manor of Beeston was held in two parts (known as moieties), Cad Beeston being one.
There, the recently re-discovered manor house remains but there was another in Beeston itself.  Until 1936, when it was demolished, Beeston Hall stood where the Oldroyd Estate has been built.  Although subjected to much alteration over the years there seems no doubt that this was the manorial centre of the village.  The building may have contained elements of an original structure at least as old as Cad Beeston Manor House.  The lower storey was of local gritstone to which an upper floor of brickwork surmounted by a slate roof was added in the 18th century.
According to old documents, in early days the Beeston half of the Manor was held by the L'Isle family, then the Rotherfields.  Later a family called de Beeston became under-tenants of an estate which included Cottingley Hall (demolished 1946) and Stank Hall which, with its adjoining New Hall, fortunately remains.  The last of the family, a Captain Beeston, sold out in 1641.  Thus the estate was broken up until 1712 when Thomas Kitchingman, twice mayor of Leeds, reunited the divided parts in a single purchase.
In its final days Beeston Hall was the property of the Low Moor Mining Company of Bradford.  They owned much of the village and so were effectively the Lords of the Manor.  Down the hill, behind the hall, was one of their coal mines, appropriately enough called Hall Pit.  In 1907 they put the house on the market and the Stones family bought it and turned the place into flats.  But decay and lack of finance at last took control and in 1928 it was sold for building development and ultimately demolished in 1936.
For some time the old ornamental lake remained below the Oldroyds and was known as Stone's Pond.  I remember taking a fishing net to the place and dipping - with little success. Now even the pool is now more, which is perhaps as well for such unattended water is a hazard to youngsters.
Some 300 years ago Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds historian, launched into print to complain that "a Gothic arched gateway leading from the street of the village, the last relic of the old manor house, has lately been removed.  Thus an antiquary has the yearly mortification of seeing one vestige of antiquity after another disappear."  And he was only grumbling about the loss of a gateway.  Now there is no manor house at all - Thoresby must have turned in his grave!

Harold Tinsdale

For a great many years Harold Tinsdale was one of  Beeston's best known characters.  In all the time he delivered the morning milk to our doorstep he was never known to miss; even when ill he managed to drive his little van so that his wife could do the legwork.  Sadly, Harold is no longer with us but before he died Helen Lyman managed to record the interview from which she has compiled this article.
Harold Tinsdale was born in 1899 and lived at 58 Bewerley Street with his parents and three sisters.  His father worked at a foundry in Dewsbury Road and then at Hawthorn Davy.
He attended Bewerley Street Infants' School in Hunslet Hall Road and moved to the school in Bewerley Street at seven years old.  He remembered Mr Kirk, the headmaster, Mr Bates and Mr Leathley.  Attached to the school in Hunslet Hall Road was a joiners' shop where Mr Jarvis was in charge.
When he was eleven he got a job delivering groceries after school and every night worked from 4.30 until 8.00 pm. He had a pair of wheels for delivering the orders and had to walk pushing the wheels.
He remembered making deliveries to a house in Tunbridge Road at the back of the Infirmary and one day he had a large earthen ware bread bowl among the goods.  He lost his grip on the wheels and the bowl fell off and broke.  The owner of the shop said he would 'stop' the price of the bowl from his wages, so his mother wouldn't let him continue working there.
He left school when he was thirteen and went to work at Boyne's Engine Company in Jack Lane The engines were all hand painted - "beautiful, they were," he said.
his pay was four shillings and six pence (22 1/2p) per week, from which he was given three pence (1p) pocket money.  He started work at 6 am and was not paid for holidays or bank holidays.
After the first world war he was out of work for a while and eventually went to work for a milkman for just over £2 a week.  He collected the milk in large 17 gallon urns from the milk train every morning.  These 17 gallon urns were emptied into smaller ones and then the milk would be ladled out with gill and pint measures into the housewives' bowls and jugs.  He left the milk round when his employer wanted Harold's job for his son.
He then went to the Post Office as a 'Temporary'.  He would be 'knocked-up' if any of the regular postmen did not go in to work, so he worked hall over Leeds, including Harehills and Woodhouse.
He started work at 5 am sorting out his first round, then delivering it.  He also had to sort and deliver a dinner-time round and a tea-time one.  If you were quick you could get an hour or so at home during the day, between deliveries.
He remembered an old, retired post office worker who would stand at a postbox in tempest Road, where the last collection was 9 pm, with his watch in his hand.  When Harold arrived to empty the box he would say, "You're two minutes early.  It shouldn't be emptied until 9 o'clock."  Harold would answer, "By the time I get this lot out I'll be two minutes late."
"The heavy sacks of mail had you bent double," he said, and when he was at Hunslet Sorting Office he delivered to the Copper Works, an hour's walk each way.
At one time he delivered to Armley Prison.  He had to wait for the door to be opened to him, they step inside and 'sign-in', hand the mail over, then 'sign-out' and leave.  When he complained that it was a waste of time signing-in as he only stepped over the threshold he was told, "If you step through that doorway you sign in," and that was that.

From Holbeck Sorting Office he delivered to Wood's Farm (which stood opposite St Anthony's Church) then he went along Old Lane which was a dirt road.  There were no houses except for two whitewashed ones in a field near where Moorhouse's jam factory was built.  Then along to Tommy Wass (which was an ice cream parlour) and then nothing until he got to the water tower up the Ring Road.  There he delivered to Miss Maude at Middleton.

He walked all the way with, perhaps, only a couple of letters to deliver.  He said, "Then you walked back through Middleton Woods until you came to a tree with a sign "HK" on it (Holbeck Sorting Office code), there you turned right to the main road where you caught the tram back."  One day a "temp" was sent and they had to send out search parties when he didn't return.  He had missed the sign and the turning.

He spoke of buying a Jowett car for £25 and giving Fr O'Connell a lift from Millshaw.  Fr O'Connell said the car would not get over the bridge.  "But it did," said Harold proudly.  "It was a grand little car."
Harold was over ninety when he died but when he was taken out by his family it was like a royal procession.  He once said he never got as far as the Park because everyone was stopping him to talk.  He was one of the characters of Beeston.

Memories from Our Blacksmith's Shop

For Kathleen Voight the village blacksmith's shop was a special place - Our Blacksmith's Shop indeed, for her maiden name was Armitage and the workshop belonged to father.
Great Grandfather Armitage was a great worker for Beeston Church under the then Canon Raines.  Unfortunately, grandfather did not follow in his father's footsteps but became a 'playboy' and got in with the horse racing fraternity.  He left a certain Mr Watson in charge who made enough money to go to South Africa and there became very rich.
When the Low Moor Mining Company sol the Beeston Hall Estate, Mr Clarke bought the Hall and its garden and my father (Arthur Armitage) bought the other half because his business of Farrier and Wheelwright was on this land.  The outbuildings were converted and let to motorists by my father - also a haulage business, Jimmy Convy's.
My older brother, Willy, lived in the cottage known as Beeston Hall Cottage after the Glitheroes left.  In fact, Mr Glitheroe died.  Mrs Glitheroe's sister was a Sunday School teacher.
Not only was my father a Master Farrier but also a wheelwright and made carts and so on.  The main man, who also taught Willy, my eldest brother, was George Stein who lived at the other side of Leeds but came every day on the tramcar.  The terminus was outside our front door.  Our Blacksmith's Shop, as it was called in those days, stood on the land between the present bus turning circle and first house of the Oldroyds.

Beeston Station

Some thirty years have passed since we had a station in Beeston.  Another thirty years before that Cyril Clark lived in the station house, so who better to recall the years between the wars when the railway was an integral part of village life?
My father was appointed Station Master at Beeston from a station in Lincolnshire in 1927.  He remained and lived there for about six years till 1933 when we moved to Lofthouse.
I followed his footsteps on the railway.  Within a year of leaving school saw me in 1932 as lad porter then telegraph lad at Ardsley LNER.  1936 saw me going to Lincolnshire as a signalman where I have remained ever since in the Boston district, the last thirty years as relief signalman from which position I retired four years ago after 48 years railway service.
I can well remember as a boy of twelve arriving at Beeston with father, grandfather, grandmother, my elder brother and two sisters and on alighting from the train taking my first sight of Yorkshire and of the station house.  I was not very impressed with its black walls in the middle of the other station buildings on the Up Platform.
My bedroom was above the office and general waiting room.  At about 5.30 am, after my first night, I was awakened by strange sounds and voices unlike any I had ever heard before.  I looked out of the bedroom window and was amazed to see the platform full of miners in their clattering, wooden soled clogs going to the train which would take them to their respective collieries in the district and was further surprised at about 3 pm to see them returning with blackened dusty faces and clothes. (No baths, showers and changing rooms in those days!)
Breakfast time saw many people catching trains to Leeds for work, among them Mr Drury, the then station master at Leeds Central, who lived in a Station Road house high above the station in the hollow.  The same people started returning on trains from 5 pm.
Saturdays saw hundreds of football fans arriving at Beeston to walk to Elland Road to watch Leeds United when playing at home.  The waiting rooms and platform were so crowded whey they all returned to travel home after the match.
Later on I got to know very well Ernest Hart, that great Leeds and international player of the time, (along with his partner and right half, Willis Edwards) who also used the train to Beeston from his home and then walked to Elland Road on match and training days.  After the match, while waiting for his train home, he would sit talking to me about the match etc.
Being railway minded, having lived all my short life on stations, it was not long before I became "part of the station" and big friends of all the staff.
There was Harry Cramm, dad's clerk, who lived in Old Lane, Jim and Walter the signalmen, porter Charlie Ingram from Leeds, John Capstick at Beeston, and a lad porter Clifford.  Charlie later went to Leeds Central and was followed by Harry Fant from Morley.  After the early morning trains Clifford used to load up his two wheeled parcel cart with parcels to deliver all round Beeston.  On Saturdays and school holidays I often went with him to help and got to know a great many people in Beeston.
I also well remember that tragic day when the afternoon Kings Cross - Leeds express, coasting full speed on the falling gradient from Ardsley tunnel to within a couple of miles of Leeds, ploughed into the Beeston gang of platelayers working on the line between Beeston Junction and Beeston Station killing with terrible injuries either three of the five man gang, of five of seven; of which I can't quite remember.
I know the tragic scene of the accident shocked and upset father for weeks after.  Being young I cannot remember the outcome of the ensuing enquiry and inquest into the fatalities, as to why the lookout man gave no warning and no one else saw or heard the approaching train.
In the winter when the lines were greasy father was often also called out to trains sticking on the sharp incline from Beeston Junction to the Tingley branch.
The goods yard dealt with all manner of goods, from coal for the merchants to waggons of shoddy manure from the mills and bones from the bone factory down the road being loaded and sent away.  So with the goods yard, parcel and passenger traffic, Beeston in those days was a very busy little station.

Beeston Station was opened in 1860.  It was built on the Great Northern line from Leeds through Tingley which was the Bradford, Wakefield and Leeds Railway at its incorporation in 1854.  The Low Moor Company's ironworks was close by (opposite Stank Hall, this side of the Woodman) so a station in Beeston was a commercial necessity.  The line passed from GNR ownership to LNER and British Railways before the station closed to passengers on 2nd March 1953.  It remained as an occasional halt until it was dismantled early in the 1960s.

Tommy Wass's

Properly, it should be "The Tommy Wass Hotel" but I've never heard anyone call it that.  Tommy Wass's it is and will continue to be; and Tommy Wass's it always has been, even before it was a pub.  But why?  Regulars should be able to tell you because there is a framed history of the house on the wall, signed W R Thorpe, December 1982.  By kind permission of the management we are able to reproduce the text here.

The Tommy Wass wasn't always a pub;  it was originally a farmhouse, and is named after my great-grandfather Thomas Wass.  Like the sorcerers of old I will conjure up for you some visions of the past, so fill up your glasses and I will tell you the history of the house.

Let us go back to the early 19th century, just after the Napoleonic Wars, one Stephen Wass, a master carpenter and wheelwright, and then a single young man, came down from Easingwold to stay with his uncle William Wass, a linen draper who had come to live in Dewsbury some years earlier.

In 1820 Stephen Wass married Judith Locock, a farmer's daughter.  They settled in Morley where Stephen followed his trade up to his death in 1868.  Of their large family of eight sons (two died very young) and one daughter, Stephen trained his boys to the trade of carpenter and wheelwright, but only one son, John, remained in that trade.  Most of the others became farmers like their forebears.

One of the sons, Thomas Wass, married Rachel Oades-Broadbent, a farmer's daughter from Tingley, in 1852, and they came to a farm in Gipsy Lane, that house having a thatched roof.
Thomas became a prosperous farmer and was well known in the district as Tommy Wass.  By the early 1870s he had moved into this house which was new, and was a substantial farmhouse and he lived here and farmed the land around until his death in 1887; his wife Rachel having died a few years earlier.  After his death he was followed by his son, Asa Wass, who remained here until around 1910.  Asa had a brother also a farmer, who lived here for a time, as did other members of his family.
The land on which this house is built had belonged to the Church Commissioners, and there was covenant in the deeds which forbade the making, storage or sale of any alcoholic liquor.
Inside the house there is a well, which my mother told me was forty feet deep, and on the warmest of summer days gave up icy cold water.  Adjoining the house were stables and cowsheds.  Below this was Woodland House, Beech Cottage and Woodland Cottage, properties all owned by my maternal great-grandfather, Henry Wadsworth.  His daughter married Asa Wass, and was my grandmother.
For a great many years Hunslet St. Peter's Church had a thriving cricket club and a tennis club, who rented a cricket field where Chatswood Avenue now stands, and tennis court adjoining Oakhurst Avenue from Tommy was.  The players were also given the facility of using the house as a changing room, and during intervals the family supplied refreshments.  The place very soon became known as the Refreshment Rooms, and that name stuck for many years.
Asa Wass lived nearby and died in 1924, but a lady called Mrs Iles and her daughter were now resident here, and had converted part of the house into a shop.  In the late 1920's the former Melbourne Brewery Company bought the house and by some means got over the covenant, and converted it into a public house.
A name for the new pub was discussed, and an "old hand" at the Melbourne Brewery said, "Goodness me.  Everybody knows that place as Tommy Wass's.  That's the only name for it."  The Wass family's consent for the use of the name was sought and eventually given.  That is how it came to be known right to the present day as the Tommy Wass.
My family's personal connection ended a great many years ago, and there are no members of the Wass family in this area today, but we do feel a little pride in the fact that the one time farm house with which we once had a long association still carries the family name.  Tommy Wass would be pleased with this.  Let us drink to his memory.  Good health.

Disaster at the Pit

Although Madelaine Jackson now lives in Pontefract she remembers her native Beeston with affection and comes "home" whenever a nostalgic visit is possible.  She has good, family reasons to recall the tragic events described here.
By the gateway to St Mary's Cemetery in Beeston stands a monument.  The inscription reads "In respectful memory of James Metcalfe, George Elliott and Benjamin Richardson, all of Beeston, who lost their lives in the accident at Park Pit on November 10th 1902.  This monument was erected by the subscriptions of fellow townsmen and friends.
The monument, by its existence, commemorates more than the men who lost their lives.  It is a tribute to the kind hearts and neighbourly ways of the people of Beeston who, in austere and difficult times, subscribed to this handsome and very costly memorial.
James Metcalfe was my great-grandfather.  Generally believed to be a Dalesman by birth, he came to Leeds around 1875 with his Scottish wife Margaret.  I believe they lived in Old Lane for a short time but very soon moved to Back Lane.  They had three children, Ada Maggie, Mary and James.

Remnants of Back Lane can still be seen - only just - but in those days it was a busy thoroughfare.  Tracing its course on an old map suggests that it ran behind the library and followed the course of St Anthony's Drive to where it meets Old Lane.  The house was No.17 and there is a photograph of this house in "Pages from our Past" with a child called Pauline sitting on the steps.

Sadly, Margaret died in childbirth in 1881 and it seems that the child did not survive either.
James remarried in 1883.  His second wife was Mary Ann Parkinson, daughter of Joshua who seems to have been a neighbour.  The family moved to No. 2 Back Lane and it appears that a widow by the name of Jane Kirkbright, a mild dealer, soon took over N. 17.
James was the son of a stonemason and had followed his father's profession.  He could also turn his hand to other allied trades and so had obtained employment as a bricklayer at Beeston New Pit, also known as Park Pit.
On Monday 10th November 1902, at around 4 pm, James Metcalfe, George Elliott (of 11 Cross Flatts Crescent) and Benjamin Richardson (131 Town Street) were engaged in the task of placing the coping stones on the top of the brickwork at the head of the shaft.  They had scaffolding across the top of the shaft and a crane was lifting the coping stones, each of which weighed between 10 and 15 hundredweights, into place.  All three men were killed when one of these stones slipped from the clutch of the crane causing the scaffolding on which they were standing to collapse and all were thrown 470 feet down the shaft.
Margaret, James and Mary Ann are buried together quite close to the monument at St. Mary's.  The sad legend beneath their names reads, "In the midst of life and happiness we are called away."
Park Pit was to claim another life on 15th April 1909 when Thomas Barker of Elland Road, who had worked for the company for 40 years, was apparently "filling coal in a cart, when he threw down his shovel and walked to the lower level round the shaft."
Soon after, a man working nearby heard a splash, as of something heavy falling into the sump below.  On investigation Thomas Barker's body was discovered.
Park Pit was owned by the Low Moor Iron and Coal Company, as was much of Beeston village.  The pit was sited in what is now Westland Road.  It seems appropriate that some of its history should be told as the site is at present offered for sale (summer 1992) and all trace may disappear completely.
James Metcalfe's son, likewise James, also married a lady by the name of Mary Ann!  She was the daughter of William and Jane Verity who lived with their seven daughters at 3 Back Lane.  At the time of his daughter's marriage William was described as a greengrocer of 33 Town Street - a change of job for him since he was a coal miner when living at Back Lane.
James and Mary moved to Wesley Street and had eight children.  He is the lamplighter whose life was so well described in "Pages from our Past".  His daughter, Edna, who wrote that article, also wrote the history of Wesley Street in the same book.  James' son, Arthur, was also a lamplighter and may well have been one of the last men to work in this capacity.
James and Mary married in 1905 at Beeston Methodist Chapel in Town Street and the witnesses at the wedding were James' sister, Ada Maggie ( who eventually went to Australia) and Samuel Elliott.  I wonder if he was the son of George Elliott?
Ironically, James' other sister, Mary, married a gentleman by the name of Herbert Richardson.  Benjamin Richardson was a single man, so the newspapers said at the time of the accident, but it may be that the long arm of coincidence has intertwined the three families by Mary marrying a brother or nephew.  We may never know for sure - unless someone out there knows and wants to share the information with me!