Michael Taylor

Does anyone know what stood adjacent to the Moor Allerton Centre before Sainsbury's etc were built

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Shirley Holton

.......and at the top of the hill, on the left, in the far distance isn't that Allerton High School?

25-Aug-2010

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Eileen Hargrave

I would think this photograph was taken around the late 1950s, possibly even the early 1960s. I remember in the early 1950s visiting an aunt and uncle who were one of the first tenants of the Tynwald estate and the area looked very different then. When they moved there from Potternewton Lane, although the house had been built, they were still waiting for street lights and roads to appear! There were no shops, library etc and the bus from Leeds city centre terminated at the junction of Scott Hall Road and King Lane; it seemed (for a young child) a very long walk from there to where St Stephens Church now stands! I remember the local “bobby” told my cousin and his pals off when he caught them playing on the building site for the church which followed at a later stage. The Queenshill estate hadn’t been built, nor had the Leafields or Leafield Towers; both sides of King Lane leading downhill towards the Ring Road were farmers’ fields, sometimes with horses in them. On the other side of the Ring Road, leading uphill, the land now occupied by the Moor Allerton Centre was grassland with a stream running through. I think the stream was probably diverted underground somehow to allow the land to be built on. This area is well-known for underground springs and wells though, which probably explains why the land still becomes so waterlogged after heavy rain. The flats on the right of King Lane were there in the early 50s and were the first phase of housing construction for the Lingfield and Fir Tree estates; the houses themselves followed later. The land opposite Allerton High School (now occupied by the Deanswood estate, Alwoodley and St Paul’s Primary schools, the Moortown Social Club etc) was also grassland and the only construction there in the early 1950s was a wooden hut used by the Council so that tenants of the new properties could pay rents, report repairs etc. When I started at Allerton High School in 1960 the bus route had been extended to run along King Lane but even then it was single lane traffic in either direction; the land now occupied by the “Park & Ride” was part of the school grounds. The houses facing the back of Allerton High School on the other side of Nursery Lane hadn’t yet been built and this was also open fields.

01-Nov-2010

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