Anybody here from Leeds?

[pete75]

I've heard Nash's Fish and Chip shop on Merrion St. has closed - is this correct?

[thirdcrank]

I believe so, although it's a long time since I was in there. Merrion Street is now part of the "Loop" so if I'm doing Dad's taxi, it's likely to be on my route but not for sightseeing. Here's a pic as was

https://www.leodis.net/viewimage/108298

Here's streetview

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.80060 ... 384!8i8192

This a little-used forum for such queries. AIUI, most of the members emigrated to facebook

https://www.secretleeds.com/

[pete75]

Thanks. Looks like it's a bar and a collection of takeaways now. Visiting Leeds in april for a couple of days and was hoping to eat there. Terrys All Time cafe seems to have gone too https://www.winealchemy.co.uk/terrys-all-time/ .

[thirdcrank]

I've unexpectedly had to do dad's taxi this afternoon so I've just got back from Leeds. There's nothing much to attract me there now and lockdown means I've been even less than that. Both my sons are fairly regular eaters-out in Leeds but it's very much a matter of personal taste.

[axel_knutt]

I've just noticed that Harry Ramsden's has 'gone' too, now renamed the "Wetherby Whaler". I wouldn't have thought there were many whalers sailed from Wetherby.

Gone since my childhood, along with

Lewis's
Schofield's
King Charles Sports Centre
Grandways
Austick's
The electronics shops in Bridge End and under the arches in Bishopgate St.
Yorkshire Post building
Willoughby Mount, Holbeck

[thirdcrank]

Fings ain't what they used to be

Several images of Harry Ramsden's in the Leodis archive. Here's one from 1952 when it's suggested 10,000 people queued for a special offer.

https://www.leodis.net/viewimage/75090

They created a franchise some years ago although the branch up the road from here closed pdq

https://www.harryramsdens.co.uk/

The Wetherby Whaler has branches opening all over. I've heard it suggested that the original Wetherby shop is the haunt of Leeds United players with time on their hands (Their training ground is now near Wetherby.)

https://www.wetherbywhaler.co.uk/

I won't bore you with my reminiscences of the other places on your list unless you insist but what's your connection with Willoughby Mount? 50+ years ago I worked at Dewsbury Road Police Station, just down the road

[pete75]

I've unexpectedly had to do dad's taxi this afternoon so I've just got back from Leeds. There's nothing much to attract me there now and lockdown means I've been even less than that. Both my sons are fairly regular eaters-out in Leeds but it's very much a matter of personal taste.

We're staying at the Radisson on the Headrow which should be close to a few decent restaurants. Looking at Leeds on Google street view, all the Tetley's pubs seem to have gone. Many appear to have become gentrified. Only the Fenton looks unchanged since my student days. Back then literally 19 out of every 20 pubs in Leeds was a Tetley house. Not a bad pint but I preferred Timothy Taylor's.

[thirdcrank]

Tetley's brewery has gone and with it any connection with Leeds although I think a version is still available. Timothy Taylor's Landlord must be one of the most widely-available brews although I'm hardly an expert. I suppose CAMRA has had the biggest influence.

[squeaker]

As a former engineering student, I'm pleased to see that the Pack Horse and the Elden are still going

[pete75]

As a former engineering student, I'm pleased to see that the Pack Horse and the Elden are still going

Looking round the corner on Google maps it looks like Nafees and Chakwals , the two cheapest curry places, have gone. Schofields appears to have vanished from the Headrow as well.

[thirdcrank]

It's amazing that the centre of Leeds has emerged with any shops at all, when you consider how the antics of Leeds City Council seem to have reinforced the general decline of high street retail. Some of this has been the national fate of chains like Debenhams and the Phillip Green empire, but a lot has been municipally inflicted like the hare-brained scheme in the 60s and seventies to make the entire central area a single level for pedestrian access. The immediate effect was to blight the whole of the Boar Lane/ Duncan Street area and all the shops there were immediately put on short-term leases because of the uncertainty. These decisions have effects which last decades. A big area was cleared to the east of Vicar Lane (Templar Street car park) and I believe that at one time the grand plan was for a grand shopping centre anchored by a new John Lewis. (Not to be confused with the long-gone Lewis's department store on the Headrow.) Eventually, the southern side of Eastgate was demolished along with Millgarth Police Station (which became a multi-storey car park) and a new John Lewis was opened, just in time for the mess at John Lewis to be revealed.

For anybody who likes trendy boutiques there's the Victorian Quarter including Harvey Nicks.

The middle of Bradford is immeasurably worse.

[Ben@Forest]

For anybody who likes trendy boutiques there's the Victorian Quarter including Harvey Nicks.

We had a Christmas lunch at Harvey Nick's in December. On the expensive side but good quality and good service. A real 'ladies who lunch' spot, when l looked around from our table, and including us, at that point there were 20 women and 3 men.

To really date me (or us) we were in Leeds to see The Human League later that day...

[thirdcrank]

....
We're staying at the Radisson on the Headrow ....

The address of that hotel is given as 1, The Light and it's a case study of the changes to this bit of the city centre in less than a hundred years.

Here's The Light now with the iconic Town Hall on the left.

Click to enlarge

Until quite recently, that arch was the entrance to Cross Fountaine Street, pictured here in 1928:-
https://www.leodis.net/viewimage/67183
I think the fence on the right surrounds the site of the then soon-to-be-built Leeds Permanent Building Society, the building eventually converted into The Light. There's more detail about The light here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light,_Leeds

Anybody still reading may wonder why this is called the light Lucus a non lucendo as Quintilian might have quipped had he been a Leeds Loiner (When he might have said A leet baht leet.)

When the building was redeveloped as The Light, urban searchlights were something of a novelty, and the night skies over Leeds and Bradford were illuminated by one each. Fortunately, it was limited to light pollution and we weren't treated to sirens as well, but it was short-lived and the Leeds one has been written out of history

[pete75]

Wasn't that also the Leeds Permanent Building Society Office? Nearby was the Ceylon Tea Centre where they served a brilliant cup of tea.

[thirdcrank]

Wasn't that also the Leeds Permanent Building Society Office? Nearby was the Ceylon Tea Centre where they served a brilliant cup of tea.

I thought I'd mentioned the Leeds Perm in my rather eye-glazing post. But yes, the whole of that building was occupied by that building society, not to be confused with the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society, just along the Headrow on the corner of Albion Street, and which now refers to what's left of itself as "The Leeds."

The moneymen screwing the building society movement is another of my many hobbyhorses. Clip, clop......