Leeds United Kingdom History

Although there is little hard evidence to support the notion, Leeds is thought to have begun life in about 500BC when settlers cleared an area beside the River Aire. More than a millennium later, King Edwin of Northumbria built one of his many residences in their little village which, by 730AD, had become known as Liodis. By 1086 the village was recorded as Ledes in the Domesday Book and was home to 35 farming families, a church and a mill.

During the early medieval period, weavers, fullers and dyers created a cottage industry for cloth in this growing village. Records from 1450 show there were cloth halls and regular wool markets and this prosperity continued to attract workers over the next 200 years. By the end of the 17th century more than 10,000 people lived in the town – now known as Leedes – and its export trade received a boost when the Aire & Calder Canal finally linked the town, via York, to the North Sea in 1699.

Within a further 100 years, Leedes had become Leeds and its 50,000 inhabitants lived in one of the wealthiest urban centres in the north of England. With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution the population exploded (it was 150,000 in 1840 and 178,000 in 1900) and the town became the hub of a network of rail and canal communications.

Riding on the back of these developments, Leeds became known as a highly successful centre for two completely different industries: tailoring and engineering. Coal was also big business. It was extracted on a large scale from the surrounding countryside and transported into the town centre for onward export. City status was granted by Queen Victoria in 1893.

The census of 1911 bears testimony to the overcrowding and squalor most of the population of 450,000 endured. It was, at that time, the fifth largest city outside of London but was almost overlooked by the Luftwaffe during WWII when only seven bombing raids hit the central area. In the latter part of the century, the city’s traditional industries gave way to banking, insurance, retail and tourism.