Leeds in Your Lunch Hour 2024 Preview

Leeds Historian Dr Kevin Grady discusses the return of his lunchtime lecture series.

Transcript

00:00 I'm Dr Kevin Grady, I'm a Leeds historian, I was director of Leeds Civic Trust for 30

00:08 years, written several books on the history of the city and just an in retirement and

00:13 all-round enthusiast for Leeds both today and in the past.

00:18 The Leeds in your Lunch Hour Lectures are returning every Wednesday in February at 1pm

00:23 in Leeds Minster and they're free to all. But when and where did they begin?

00:28 In 2007 we were celebrating the 800th anniversary of Leeds being a town with the creation of

00:36 Brigate as the big market street and I sort of thought actually that it would be good

00:41 to get out and persuade people who worked in the city centre in particular just to get

00:47 a taste of some aspects of Leeds which I knew about, quite popular lectures, not too academic

00:53 and so they worked tremendously well so within, I don't know, sort of three or four weeks

01:00 we got 250 people turning up in the church which was absolutely astonishing. So it's

01:05 gone on for the last 17 years, these days the lectures are at Leeds Minster and it's

01:11 like an occasion really, there's a vibe to it and so it's really pleasing to do them.

01:16 The first theme this year is the historic panoramas and prospects of Leeds of the following

01:21 week detailing Mr Cossin's and his remarkable new and exact plan of the town of Leeds in

01:26 1726. I start off in the 17th century with a wonderful

01:31 panorama by William Lodge that showed the city from the south, you know, with all sorts

01:37 of interesting features. Then I move into the 18th century when we're tremendously lucky

01:41 that several panoramas were drawn of Leeds, again showing its development, new buildings

01:47 appearing, whereas now of course the skyline is being dominated by these amazing high-rise

01:54 apartment blocks. Wednesday the 21st of February we'll take

01:57 a look at the rise and fall of Leeds' shopping centres and department stores, with Wellington

02:02 Street, Wellington Place and Whitehall Road being the focus of the last lecture.

02:06 In the 1960s there was quite a lot of damage done to the city centre with rather ugly concrete

02:13 buildings that went up. We then went into a phase of the Leeds look with a lot of red

02:18 brick and slate roofs, but then from the 1990s there's been a dramatic improvement. The Corn

02:23 Exchange here revitalised, the city market revitalised, wonderful things happening in

02:31 the arcades restored, and what we now have is a very interesting mix, some good modern

02:36 buildings with the wonderful Georgian and Edwardian Victorian heritage. So Leeds is

02:43 actually a fascinating city. So it's Leeds in the Old Lunch Hour lectures every Wednesday

02:48 in February, start at one o'clock, you don't have to book, you just roll up at Leeds Midster

02:54 and I think people go away having had their spirits raised and go and tell their friends

03:00 about things about Leeds that they hadn't known before.