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Blue plaque unveiled at Gledhow Hall
A hall which was home to the first Lord Mayor of Leeds, Sir James Kitson, was celebrated by his present-day counterpart.
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Councillor Frank Wilkinson unveiled a blue plaque at Gledhow Hall, where industrialist and MP Sir James lived from 1884 to 1911.
The history of the Gledhow estate stretches back much further.
The estate was gifted to Kirkstall Abbey in the Middle Ages, but reverted to the Crown in 1539 on on the dissolution of the monasteries.
In 1601 the Thwaites family bought it from Elizabeth I.
John Thwaites, Alderman of Leeds in 1653, died at Gledhow Hall in an earlier house on the site in 1671.
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The existing hall was built in the 1600s.
The estate passed to his son-in-law, Edward Waddington, who built the curious Gipton Spa House in the grounds, which can still be seen today on Gledhow Valley Road.
Cloth merchant Jeremiah Dixon, bought the estate in 1763 and remodelled the old hall.
He made additions to the estate and redesigned the gardens, pleasure grounds, plantations and woods.
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His initials and the date 1768 are still to be seen on the bridge across Gledhow Lane.
He died in 1782 Sir John Beckett, (1743-1826), banker and Mayor of Leeds in 1775 and 1797, lived at Gledhow Hall from around 1817 to 1826.
Subsequently, Thomas Benyon, flax spinner with premises at Meadow Lane, lived there with his family.
After occupation by the Cooper family the hall was put up for sale in 1878.
It was bought Sir James Kitson, later Baron Airedale, head of the Monkbridge Iron & Steel Company.
A staunch Liberal, he became the city's first lord mayor in 1897, and in 1902 entertained the Earl of Roseberry, with 200 torchbearers escorting them to the hall.
In the First World War the hall was used as a military hospital.
Today it is divided into private flats.
Leeds Civic Trust, guardian of the city's architectural heritage, awards the plaques to mark places and people of note in Leeds.
The plaque has been sponsored by Gledhow Valley Conservation Area Group.
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Weather for Leeds
Friday 18 May 2012
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