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Your Place...and mine
Back-to-back houses were built as homes for the working classes a century ago and have helped define the character of Leeds ever since but now some of them stand empty, ready to be torn down. Jayne Dawson revisits the street of back-to-backs where she grew up
It gets off to a bad start. Eight front doors, eight locked security gates. It's not a welcoming sight.
I'm on Paisley Place in Armley, revisiting my childhood home. It's a row of back-to-backs, that style of house pretty much unknown outside Leeds, in an area that may not be grand but has a certain claim to fame – writers Alan Bennett and Barbara Taylor Bradford both started life in neighbouring streets.
The idea is to see how things have changed since I grew up there in the Sixties, now that similar houses in another part of the city are to be demolished, and first impressions are that, frankly, it's all gone a bit downhill.
The residents of present-day Paisley Place seemed to have felt the need to pull up the drawbridge, bar themselves against the outside world.
Out of 14 houses, 10 have security gates. On one side, that's every single house. Even allowing for the rosy glow of childhood nostalgia, that's not quite how I remember things.
The things I do remember about Paisley Place are embarrassingly old-fashioned.
The street back then was cobbled, though now it has been tarred over, a decision guaranteed to obliterate its old-fashioned charm.
And though now the street is completely deserted, giving off vibes of bleakness, blankness and hostility on a grey winter's day, back then there always seemed to be people walking up and down.
In fairness, this probably had a lot to do with the toilets being outside, in blocks halfway down the street.
That's my bad memory of Paisley Place – the toilet. Not the fact that it was outside, which seemed perfectly normal, but its size.
Our toilet was encased in a huge wooden box so high that I lived in terror of falling down it and my mother not rescuing me. Plus, we shared it with Mrs Oddy next door. And she was in there a lot.
Just to complete the Charles Dickens-style picture for you, in place of a bathroom there was a tin bath in the kitchen though, being little, I used to get bathed in the sink instead. On Sunday mornings I'd sit there, all squashed in, and listen to the Salvation Army band playing on the street outside. I know, I can hear Hovis advert music too. But what can I say? That's really how it was... and don't even get me started on the washhouse and the public baths... go on then, I'll tell you later.
So, back in 2010 I knock on the door of my old home, No.8. The signs are promising – there isn't a security gate. But it's all disappointment today and there's no one home. I leave a note and walk away.
Then, I spot an unlocked security gate and head for it. A man answers the door and tells me he doesn't live there, it's his father's house. I ask if I can speak to him.
"He's in bed, there's no point coming back another time." He says it like he really means it.
I try Mrs Oddy's old house at No.6. There's no one home. I liked Mrs Oddy, despite the toilet thing. She was a great person to show off your new clothes to, always remembering to demand a twirl to make a proper occasion of it.
So I try the house at the bottom of the street instead. I have fond memories of this house, or rather the tiny strip of land at the side of it which was my pretend jungle, but today no one wants to play. There's someone in, but he tells me he doesn't live there either, it's his girlfriend's place and she's not in. The door shuts, not exactly in my face, but kind of.
I'm feeling a bit upset. I know this was a friendly street, I have proof. My mum, as a newly-married 18-year-old, made friends with Mrs Prince at No.9 and they are still friends now 50 years later. Heck, they're still neighbours, though in a different part of the city.
Mrs Prince, or Gwen as I am allowed to call her, used to look after me, along with her son Stuart, while my mum was at work. I was frightened of toilets, he was frightened of snow and the moon, but we both enjoyed rolling up the tar between the cobbles on hot days, so there was common ground.
Then, to complete that earlier Hovis moment for you, at weekends me and mum would walk to Armley washhouse where she would do the washing, and then we would visit Armley baths where for a sixpence you could get a proper bath with soap included and everything. I'm telling you, it was a different world before people were given grants to install bathrooms.
Gwen, now 84, moved into Paisley Place in 1948 and lived there for almost 20 years. "It was a good place to live, everybody knew everybody else. The neighbours did complain about me once though, because I had hung washing out across the street on a Sunday, they didn't think it was right.
"It was upper Armley you see, which was a bit posher than the rest of Armley, people were impressed if you said you lived there."
I squeeze my arm through the security bars and knock on No.9 but, because this is the kind of luck I'm having today, there's no reply.
I briefly consider knocking on Mrs Spence's door. She lived at the bottom and was fastidiously neat and tidy, famous for walking up and down to the dustbins all day with tiny little scraps because the dustbins were kept in the yard with the toilets back then which was, to be honest, an improvement on today's wheelie bin situation. Or Mrs Smith's – she used to be equally fastidious about the cleanliness of the flagstones outside her house and didn't really like it if anyone walked on them. Or Olive's house – she was a former actress and the only woman in Armley to address anyone as "darling".
But I don't bother. The security gates are locked, the houses are dark and empty, and Mrs Spence and Mrs Smith and Olive are definitely not there. This is clearly destined to be just a street of ghosts for me.
But then I spot an unlocked security gate at No.11, and discover Kerry and Lee.
They will talk to me. I feel a gratefulness that verges on weepy. We go in the house and I see the same steep staircase that used to be my undoing as a child – more often than not I somersaulted into the living room.
Kerry Rodgers, 22, and Lee Sykes, 25, have lived in Paisley Place with their daughter Kaci, three, for two years – and they like it.
Life it turns out, isn't bad on Paisley Place. Despite the security gates, there isn't a lot of crime, they say. They rent their house but the street is a mix of bought and rented.
"The gate was on when we came here but there wasn't even a lock on it, we bought one ourselves because it makes a good safety gate for Kaci. I think they were put on because the houses open straight onto the street," says Kerry.
"I know the neighbours either side and opposite and they are all nice, we like it here and are settled. We are not planning on moving anywhere else. It's quiet but it's mainly because everyone is at work."
Lee, who works for a firm manufacturing windows, says: "There used to be a bit of trouble around here but it was really just one house from a different street and they are gone now."
I tell Kerry about the cobbles and the outside toilets, now just overgrown gaps in the street. She tells me that when it rains you can still see the outlines of the cobbles.
As for my old house, she tells me that it is currently empty with just the builders in – but there used to be a little boy living there and he used to come in to play with Kaci.
Suddenly life seems better. Paisley Place is different, but I still recognise it.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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