Ralph Thoresby - Son of Leeds
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Ralph Thoresby - Son of Leeds
from The Barwicker No. 87
It is fitting that as we celebrate the City of Leeds 800th Charter this year, we remember the monumental history of Leeds written by Ralph Thoresby, the city's first historian and topographer. The purpose of this article is to give a brief snapshot of what the city was like in his time.
Thoresby published his Ducatus Leodiensis or the Topography of the Ancient and Populous Town and Parish of Leedes in 1715. This 628 page tome is a jumble of local and national history, pedigrees of the nobility, catalogue of manuscripts, artefacts, references to various editions of the Bible and stories of unusual accidents that have attended some persons. Interestingly the edition owned by Barwick parish church was given by Jacobi Edgcumbe in 1749, he was instituted Rector on 13 June 1749, but died the following year, 14 May 1750. His ink written spidery marginal notes now brown with age, makes fascinating reading.
Thoresby was a remarkable man. He was devoted to his prosperous merchant family, particularly his father and was educated at Leeds Grammar school. He became a merchant, distinguished antiquarian, scholar, historian, geographer, benefactor, diarist, and deeply religious nonconformist who built up his own museum, being particularly fascinated by coins and medals. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.
This work was published in the infancy of the art of printing and the pedantic Thoresby struggled to be precise in his meaning and judgements as he drew on historical, linguistic and legal sources. Thus a paragraph will often include English, Saxon, Latin, a biblical or legal reference, a digression or two followed by a qualification and then an analysis and subsequent reflection on what he had just written.
We learn that the Saxon 'Leod' becomes 'Leod in the wood', or 'Loid, Luit, Loidis or Leedes'. He commented that the Brigantes, contended earnestly for their native liberty, yet he approved of the Roman occupation. A kindly providence made us very early a province of the Roman Empire, bringing civility, arts and good manners with Christianity.
The Leeds area prospered under the Saxons and Thoresby commented that the names of towns and hamlets were Saxon, but the rivers and woods were British. He was delighted that Penda was defeated at the Battle of Winmoor when the pagans were miraculously defeated and their design of extirpating the Christian name and religion wonderfully frustrated. He wrote about the terrible effects of successive invasions on the people,how sadly harassed these parts were by the Danes, who entered Humber with 240 sails of ships. The impact of the 'Harrying of the North' following the Norman Conquest, was catastrophic. The cruelties of William the Conqueror in these parts (which he so depopulated and wasted for threescore miles about York, that the former inhabitants could not know it) were so great that he cried out in horror on his deathbed.
At this juncture, the preacher Thoresby could not resist asking us to consider our own mortality. Imagine you saw your bones tumbled out of your graves, as they are shortly to be, and men handling your skulls and enquiring who is this? Tell me of what account will the world be then.
He wrote that Leeds, this ancient and populous town, stands upon the north side of the river Are. Emphasising the smooth flow of the river, Thoresby wrote that Ara in the British tongue signifies slow and easy as the river Arar in France, which moves so incredibly slow that by the eye it can scarce be judged which way it has its course. He referred to the famous castle, at West Park, which was besieged by King Stephen in his march north to Scotland in 1139 and how King Richard II lodged there before his barbarous murder in Pontefract castle. The street that led from the castle to the town was called 'Bore-lane, Bur-lane, or Burrow-lane'. Water which ran down from the high town to the river, provided 'Swine beck' as the district was called from the customary washing of the animals there.
An old Saxon custom survived where local people had a common table in the street and ate and drank from a public fund. The great local philanthropist John Harrison, the wonder of his own and pattern of succeeding ages, was an enlightened leader of society. He built the New Street or New Kirkgate, St John's Church (1664), a hospital, almshouses, a free school, the market cross and contributed generously to the growing city. Thoresby regarded him as the chief glory of this populous town. He was also an eccentric, building in 'Bur-lane' - a good old fashioned house with holes or passages cut in the door and ceilings for the free passage of cats , he seems to have had as great an affection, as another eminent benefactor had, Sir Richard Whitington who was thrice Lord Mayor of London.\
The Head-Row was so- called by our predecessors from its elevated situation. It was of old one entire street, but is now divided into the Upper and Nether Head Rows by New Street. Near the West Bar at the Upper Head Row was the 'Red Hall', so called because it was the first that was built of brick. (1628) Thoresby painted a vivid picture of the famous cloth market, the life not of the Town alone, but these parts of England. The market had initially been on the bridge, over the Broadare, built out of the castle ruins. The cloth was laid upon the bridge battlements and the benches below, every Tuesday and Saturday morning until June 1684 when it was removed to Briggate, the broad street. There would be a great noise among the vulgar, where the clothier may, together with his pot of ale, have a noggin 'porage', and a trencher of either boiled or roasted meat for two pence. The hoi polloi provided the colour and excitement of the market while the serious business was carried on involving a great deal of trade and money. amongst the more judicious, where several thousand pounds worth of broad cloth are bought and generally speaking, paid for ..and this with so profound a silence as is surprising to strangers, who from the adjoining galley can hear no more noise than the lowly murmur of the merchant upon the exchange at London. After the signal given by the old chapel bell at the bridge, the benches holding the cloth were removed so that other traders could market their own goods in the street, which included linen, shoes, hardware, wooden vessels, wicker baskets and a variety of other goods.
There were thriving fruit, food, meat and dairy markets. Fruit was brought in such vast quantities that, Halifax and other considerable markets are supplied. On one recorded occasion five hundred loads of apples were traded. Fish was plentiful, notwithstanding the great distance from the sea and was sold at least twice a week. Foodstuffs paid a local tax; 4 pence a cart being quoted as contributing to the fish toll of five shillings a day. Meat was freely available and the Middle Row had one of the best furnished flesh shambles in the north of England.There was also a thriving market for cow's milk, additionally there were plentiful supplies of poultry.
The Horse Fair was in the Upper Head Row accompanied by considerable general trading in the Lower Head Row. Indeed there was so much trading going on that Thoresby lost patience in recording it all, for there was,whatever is necessary for the comfortable sustenance of mankind, though too tedious particularly to recite.
The Corn Market was regionally famous and do.
Thoresby showed that Leeds was a wealthy, bustling, ambitious and rapidly expanding city, confident in its own development and led by ambitious entrepreneurs, ingenious craftsmen and benevolent citizens, all sustained by polls and taxes. Christian values and the Protestant work ethic were never far from his thoughts. He warned that - as the inhabitants have fullness of bread, they may ever beware of that pride and abundance of idleness, that do too frequently accompany it He urged the rich to look after the poor and the needy.
Then as now there was concern about deteriorating public behaviour. Outside the Saxon Moot Hall or Guild Hall were the stocks so that Justices of the Peace may see the punishments inflicted upon the malefactors. The growing city was experiencing new problems as values changed. If the neck stocks, was now as then, to be the reward of such as profane the Lord's Day, I fear what is scarce beheld in an age, might be seen every week; and that dead stock would bear a cursed fruit all the year long.
Thoresby described how in the descent from the Head Row by the Vicar Lane to Kirkgate, there is nothing observable except an old chapel and almshouses, one of which is absolutely lost and the other in danger. But he wrote favourably about the Parish Church (St Peter's) an emblem of the church militant, black but comely, being of great antiquity. There was a church here in Saxon times where the Kings of Northumberland probably had their palace. He commented that before the Reformation there were no pews here 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 was the only layman permitted to have a seat within the chancel. The church was filled on Sunday but not on weekdays, giving Thoresby the deepest concern.
From the church to the bridge was a foot pathway through the fields, named the 'Cawls or Calls', (meaning beaten path from Latin.) Thoresby mentioned some of the inventors and engineers who were to play a vital role in fostering manufacturing in the city. The river had been made navigable by Act of Parliament procured by the inhabitants. He referred to an engine for conveying the river water by lead pipes to the several parts of the town performed in 1695 by the ingenious Mr George Sorocold, the great English engineer.
Mr John Atkinson of Beeston made an ingenious contrivance ..a water wheel carries both the rape mill, and a mill for grinding logwood also a fulling stock for milling serges and a twisting mill with 80 bobbins; also a stone for grinding scythes, sickles also a throw for turning wood.
There was also an ingenious artist on the other side of the bridge, Jo Armitage, who turns strong and large pieces of iron and steel in an engine , contrived for that purpose, useful in all strong machines and movements, as mills for plate, tobacco mills, malt-mills, spindles for corn mills.
Thoresby listed the many minor trades, activities, crafts and forgotten machines along with their inventors coming together to fuel the explosive industrial developments that were taking place. We glimpse the inventiveness of unknown, self-taught craftsmen as they tried to produce precisely engineered machine tools. Jacks are also made after a new and curious method, the wheels and axis and all the moving parts (and which formerly, and now, by most are filed) being all turned down to exactness and the teeth cut in an engine; also fowling pieces, fine razors, scissors and lancets are made, grinded and polished.
These early stirrings of industrial growth were to produce a mighty engineering industry in the city. Developments like this were to be seen all over the country as Leeds became a world manufacturing city and the nation became the workshop of the world in the nineteenth century. We are indeed fortunate that a visionary like Ralph Thoresby was able to record these nascent developments in the city and locality. He was thinking of the future, as was Jacobi Edgcumbe, whose expensive present to the parish, less than a year before his death, sustains us, even today.
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