Cobbled streets in Leeds.

[volvojack]

After recent reports of thefts of pavements by people posing as official contractors, this caught my eye - it's Wellington Street, Morley.

Wellington Street.JPG

For anybody unfamiliar with the area, it runs along one side of Morley Town Hall.

Was this pile of stones ready for a quick getaway, I wondered. (On your marks, get sett, go! )

Pile of stones.JPG

The only ... er ... concrete evidence that the civic heritage wasn't being stolen from under our very feet was that some of the flags had already been replaced and repointed. Here are some of the stones which formed the carriageway ready to be re-laid.

Work in progress.JPG

The carriageway here was certainly in a sorry state of repair when Leeds City Council agreed to fund this restoration work. I've not managed to attach a fourth picture with some detail of the damage, so I may try again with that later.

I do wonder about this work being done at this location. Morley Town Hall is an important civic building, but most of its setting has been destroyed by modern retail developments. Wellington Street is now just a side street, serving only as a bus route and with little other purpose. Indeed, it's almost half a century of relentless use by buses that has so obviously wrecked the surface of the carriageway. Although the bus services have been re-routed for the period of the works, they will return here afterwards, I understand, so the reinstatement may soon be starting to deteriorate. I imagine the skills to do this type of work, especially relaying existing stones rather than replacing them with all new evenly matched materials, must be disappearing, like so many old crafts.

[volvojack]

This picture reminds me that there was the Morley Police station was just there on the right of the picture. it was late 1950's and i went on a Stag night to the Spread Eagle Pub at Gildersome. we decided to end the evening in Morley and after waiting for a bus the Groom to be who was a car mechanic said he was going into the car park and get us some wheels. he came out with a pick up truck and the six of us piled in .as non of us owned transport it seemed quite exciting. when we got to Morley we left it outside there where the cobble stones are in your photo. We knew it was wrong but would not have thought to damage it, nowadays sadly the young ones would trash a vehicle or set fire to it.
I am not condoning our action just how times have changed .
Sorry for beingoff topic, its just the memory

[volvojack]

They are very interesting images jma .

Your "On your marks, get sett, go! " made me smile. The blocks could perhaps be said to getting 'sett in stone' .

As jma is an ex. serving Police Officer i would think that if these cobbles were stolen he would soon catch up with his "Quarry"

[jma]

I know parts of my post were a bit tongue-in-cheek but it's a serious subject. I tried to be careful with some of the terminology because I didn't want to get into a row over the differences between cobbles, setts, flags etc

Here's the picture of some of the damage in more detail. I think that round hole towards the middle of the picture must have been a socket for some sort of post or bollard. (At some point it's been refilled with concrete.)

Detail of damage.JPG (212.61 KiB) Viewed 1318 times

The old Morley Police Station at this location was certainly still in use when I was at Dewsbury Road in the late 1960's, although it was West Riding Constabulary until 1968 and then West Yorkshire Constabulary until 1974. Although we had a shared border, we had remarkably little to do with them. I remember going once to that police station on duty and unlike most of my memories from that time, I've no idea why I went: probably to collect a prisoner or something similar. My only vague recollection is that it was early on early turn, if that makes sense and everybody seemed snug inside with no obvious plan to go outside.

There are several pictures on Leodis of Wellington Street, Morley, including a very impressive looking police inspector dating from the early 1900's in a dress tunic with all the frogging down the front. Discipline will have been very strict in his day. Different force, of course, but he will have been a contemporary of volvojack's grandfather.

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL