Burmantofts
| Burmantofts | |
|---|---|
 St Agnes Church with Shakespeare Towers behind |
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 Burmantofts
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| Burmantofts shown within West Yorkshire | |
| Population | 24,863 (Burmantofts and Richmond Hill Ward. 2011) |
| Metropolitan borough | |
| Metropolitan county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LEEDS |
| Postcode district | LS9 |
| Dialling code | 0113 |
| Police | West Yorkshire |
| Fire | West Yorkshire |
| Ambulance | Yorkshire |
| EU Parliament | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| UK Parliament | |
Burmantofts is an area of 1960s high-rise housing blocks in inner-city east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England adjacent to the city centre and St. James's Hospital. It is a racially diverse area, with sizable Afro-Caribbean, Irish communities and Asylum Seekers, but suffers the social problems typical of similar areas across the country. The area has a small selection of pubs and the Anglers Club on Nippet Lane. Burmantofts is perhaps most notable for Burmantofts Pottery and the former Burtons textile factory, which is still owned by Burtons, but only used as a storage facility. In the 1900s and early twentieth century, Burmantofts was a large centre of the textile industry.
The name comes from the half-acre parcels of land (or tofts) given to owners of building plots (or burgages) by the River Aire, thus Burgage Men's Tofts. The burgage men pursued craft businesses in the town, and grew crops on their tofts, such as grain which would be processed at the nearby mill on what is now Miles Hill.
It was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield and coal mines and clay extraction led to works making bricks and earthenware. Notably in 1842 Lassey and Wilcock acquired 100 acres north of Nippet Lane, and found they were able to extract both coal and clay from the same mine and became coal sellers and brickmakers. In 1870 this became Wilcock and Co also selling drainage pipes, though this only occupied 4 acres, the rest being farmland. Further development of the site and of newer products led to Burmantofts Pottery, which was made there until 1957.
In 1878, Burmantofts was the site of Leeds' first municipal waste incinerator, making use of a former industrial chimney.
The area was also home to some textile industry and in 1921, Montague Burton began to develop a site on Hudson Road which eventually became the biggest clothing factory in the world.
After the Second World War Burmantofts was in a very poor condition, however redevelopment did not occur for sometime. While the area was dilapidated and buildings such as the Pineapple Hotel (no 77 Accommodation Road) stood derelict for many years throughout the 1930s and 1940s, no real redevelopment started until the mid-1950s, most of this however was just demolition and in this time only a handful of houses were built around Torre Road and Lupton Avenue. In 1960 the site of Burmantofts Pottery was acquired by the Leeds Corporation and used for housing and the Shakespeare school.
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Wikipedia