SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

I did come to the conclusion that some sort of remote-controlled water craft would be the best thing. I have "a drone" but it' s hellish to control as it's cheap and the GPS 'copters need GPS...
As to the name, I have no idea. I tend to think "Holbeck Beck" is a little tortologous but it may well be that it's not.

BarFly wrote:I did come to the conclusion that some sort of remote-controlled water craft would be the best thing. I have "a drone" but it' s hellish to control as it's cheap and the GPS 'copters need GPS...
As to the name, I have no idea. I tend to think "Holbeck Beck" is a little tortologous but it may well be that it's not.

Cheers Barfly.

I wonder if Wykebeck Beck should really be Wyke Beck, as Wykebeck Beck does also sound a bit of a mouthful just like Holbeck Beck.

PS. I was briefly at the site around 11:45 today and just as I got there the yellow water taxi was passing downriver in front of the Holbeck Beck outlet. It could have been an interesting photo if I had time to get my camera ready!

Leodian wrote:I wonder if Wykebeck Beck should really be Wyke Beck, as Wykebeck Beck does also sound a bit of a mouthful just like Holbeck Beck.

I thought I had cleared this up in an earlier post the beck is called Hol Beck and not Holbeck Beck.

Just the same with the Wyke Beck, where I used to play and fish during the 50's. It was never called the Wykebeck Beck, its Wyke Beck.

Wyke Beck runs from Waterloo Lake down to Asket Hill then bottom of Seacroft (South Parkway), on to Killingbeck (all one word) and into Killingbeck Pond (no longer there) under the railway through White Bridge, Halton Moor, Thorpe Hall and finally empties into the River Aire.

As a young lad in the early 1950s playing around Wyke Beck was a common action. Walking across a large pipe (metal?) that crossed the beck near Halton Moor Avenue was always exciting (and foolish, but who thought about that as a kid ).

These are a couple of photos that I took on May 28 2015 of the ongoing flood defence work at Victoria Bridge. I don't know but I assume that the wall is to keep water in the river channel and so not to provide a flow channel for flood water.

Here is a map of Hol Beck flowing into the River Aire from 1889. To the right where the Asda buildings are now was a continuous row of wharfs.

Thanks for that map buffaloskinnner . It shows that Hol Beck ran into the River Aire there but I'm unsure if that is also where the modern outflow is or a possible now closed site a few yards up river that has the metal or concrete fixtures I showed in photos that I took on June 4 2015 and posted on June 5 in the 'My walk around Victorian Holbeck' thread that was started by Phill_dvsn. It's all very interesting.

I pass ove Victoria Bridge most work mornings on the top deck of a bus. I've attached a screenshot from google streetview https://goo.gl/maps/vUVQA Given the lock won't have moved in the last 130 years and the BMB Group building may well be the warehouse my suspicion would be that the Beck has been straightened from where it went under the bridge in Buffalo Skinner's map and in that map emerged pretty close to where the "corrugated concrete" wall is. Edit to add: you can see where the beck goes underground by the trees to the left of the modern building built in almost Georgian style.

From the air https://goo.gl/maps/zTBuF the Beck no emerges under where the dark coloured car and sandwiched by two white ones are, mid right, which is pretty straight from the continuation of the beck that can be seen bottom left. The slight kink visible in the map would have taken it to the two small trees with the white object (car?) underneath and between.

I don't believe that there is any doubt that the old exit is as Tyke Boy states. The 1889 map is quite clear on the run of the Beck into the Aire.
We haven't been able to see the old exit for many years now as it was hidden by the large amount of bushes which used to hang over and cover the old exit channel.

BarFly wrote:The Hol Beck is a minor obsession of mine, having spent a good deal of my life going past bits of it so thank you Leo for this .
One of these days I'll either don waders or buy a remote-control boat and find out where the Hol Beck goes...

I remember my Grandad saying when he was a young man "I always got off at Holbeck" ....... Funny but I don' remember him ever catching a train. Mmmmm.