Leeds nostalgia: Your letters about Quarry Hill flats: '˜The death of a dream'.

Leeds, 1957
Daffodils on railway banking, showing bus station and Quarry Hill flats.Leeds, 1957
Daffodils on railway banking, showing bus station and Quarry Hill flats.
Leeds, 1957 Daffodils on railway banking, showing bus station and Quarry Hill flats.
Over the past few weeks we have given a potted history of Quarry Hill Flats in Leeds, from their inspirational beginning, through the heady decades when countless families took city living to a new level, to their ultimate demise and demolition.

You have already shared some of your memories with us but we have had quite a response about the flats.

One of the most surprising of all came all the way from Arizona in the US.

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Chris Rimington wrote to us, saying that his son, who still lives in Leeds and actually worked on the demolition of the flats, had been sending him clippings of our articles.

Leeds, June 1978.

A new view of Waterloo Church, St Mary's School, Leeds, now that the last of the Quarry Hill flats has been demolished.Leeds, June 1978.

A new view of Waterloo Church, St Mary's School, Leeds, now that the last of the Quarry Hill flats has been demolished.
Leeds, June 1978. A new view of Waterloo Church, St Mary's School, Leeds, now that the last of the Quarry Hill flats has been demolished.

The ex-Loiner, who left Leeds in 1967, said: “My son has been sending me paper clippings of the fall of the wonderful QHF, I lived in Leeds in the in Leeds mid-50s and the flats as they were known were the hub of the city. Town hall and such played second fiddle to the flats. I was from Scarborough before moving to Leeds at 15, when I went back and forth I knew I was back in Leeds at the sight of the flats each time.”

It’s good to know the YEP has global reach and that people still remember Quarry Hill flats.

Demotion began in 1975 but continued methodically until June 1978, when just a tangled mass of debris remained. All this at a time when the council house waiting list stood at 17,000. The YEP carried the headline: ‘The Death of a Dream’. And so it was.

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Meanwhile, reader D S Boyes, 74, of Bramley, writes: “I lived in QHF as a child from 1948-56. The principle of QHF was good but the design and constructon seriously flawed, eg: coal fires to provide oven heat and hot water.

“There were lots of pubs nearby, most now demolished. In reality, it was a dream of city living which never cam true.”

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