Sponsored by
South Leeds: Bygone days of the ‘beautiful isle’
GROWING COMMUNITY: Belle Isle housing estate in 1987.
The Belle Isle we know today is a relatively recent adjunct to the city of Leeds, being entirely constructed as a self-contained village in the run up to and after the Second World War.
However, it is arguable whether those who first moved there thought it a better than the one life they had left, for while it may have lived up to its name – Belle Isle meaning ‘beautiful island’ in French – it still lacked a sense of community.
Certainly, for those who did move out of the city centre slums in the 1950s and 1960s, it represented a cleaner, more healthier lifestyle but it was at the sacrifice of a sense of belonging.
The ready-made utopia was designed to have its own social centre, library, swimming baths and open-air pool, cinema, social welfare centre, two hotels, a police station, working men’s club and playing fields.
Kevin Grady, chairman of Leeds Civic Society, said: “People who had been used to living in the inner city, practically on top of one another, suddenly found themselves surrounded by wide-open spaces and several miles outside the city centre and all it had to offer.
“While people moved in, one of the problems was the promised community facilities never arrived.”
Prior to the war, Belle Isle had a small hamlet housing workers at the vast Middleton Colliery, interspersed by the odd farmstead.
The modern estate was built on 90-acres of open fields compulsory purchased by Leeds Corporation in the 1930s.
On March 26, 1935, it was proposed to erect 4,000 dwellings, most to use the so-called Mopin system of construction, which meant erecting a framework and attaching to that pre-fabricated panels.
The plan made provision for 702 semi-detached houses, 206 houses or flats in blocks, 24 houses and shops, two children’s homes as well as houses for a doctor, a dentist, two midwives and 30 houses for ‘aged men’, 44 lock-up garages and the reservation of two sites for further semi-detached prefabricated houses, all to be constructed by the Corporation, together with 90 houses to be built by private builders.
By December, 1945, it was reported: “You can walk up Broom Gardens now and fail to find a house unoccupied. Washing on the lines, milk bottles outside the doors... and smoke from chimneys give the locality a homely appearance.
“Although some of the glamour of early possession has worn off, most householders still consider themselves lucky to get such accommodation.
It added: “The snag, if you can call it that – is the houses are rather difficult to keep warm.”
One person closely associated with the creation of Belle Isle was the Vicar of Holbeck, the Rev Charles Jenkinson, an Anglican reformer and radical city councillor who pushed through slum clearance and moved his entire congregation to St John & St Barnabas Church, Belle Isle in 1937.
A Blue Plaque is due to be erected in his honour on Sunday. (February 12)
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.