I think that you can tell how much I liked discovering this cobblestone path from my drawing. You take a fork in a path deep in Middleton Woods, cross a stream and there it is, looking like the kind of place that Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man might stride along on the look-out for ‘Lions . . . and Tigers . . . and Bears’.
You get a great sense of history walking through the Woods. The cobblestone path must go back a long way because one map shows a Borough Constituency Boundary following it.
Unfortunately there’s a bit of a question-mark hanging over this path as Leeds Council, the current owners intend to dispose of it so that a car park can be built (there’s more to it than that, but you get the picture. I’ve had an update from a local campaigner, below).
The constituency boundary seems to have moved, but hope that Hilary Benn, MP for Leeds Central since 2010, when the boundaries were last changed, will lend his support to calls to keep the path and preserve its character.
Update from a local campaigner
These are the details as I understand them, but it’s quite a complex picture, and it’s the implications of the scheme have appeared rather suddenly, so apologies if any these details are incorrect.
The council are meeting on Wednesday to discuss handing over the path to the school and 7.4 acres of greenbelt formerly South Leeds Golf Club land. The council had advised the public in March that the land was to be rewilded and incorporated into Middleton Park. The school want a new car park on their land and they propose to build a hard sports area on the rewilded land plus a new football pitch. Many mature trees will be destroyed. As they are an Academy Trust this is public green space being gifted by a local authority to a private organisation. The school already have a 3G pitch and plenty of space for sport if they didn’t build the new car park. John Charles Centre for Sport is also a short walk from the school through the wood.
We have all enjoyed walking on the rewilded area especially over lockdown so this has been a real shock to local residents. I’m not sure of the procedure after Wednesday’s meeting. Presumably the land will be transferred to the school and then maybe we will be fighting individual planning applications.
As a boy i walked this path many times with my Dad. Before the School was built it was a field of potatoes. Coming from Gypsy Lane instead of entering the wood had you turned left until it was demolished stood Scurrs House my Dads childhood home. In the 17th century it was the scene of a triple murder. The owner Leonard Scurr together with his Mother and a Maid were murdered One of the murderers called Holroyd was publicly executed on Holbeck Moor in 1682
My grandma lived on Gypsy Lane and we used to ride our ponies down to the woods when the Southleigh’s finished just after the bungalows .. There was an ancient derelict shop (or was it your house) with a bay window and small squares of glass like the old curiosity shop and a painted advert on the side for I am sure camel cigarettes. If you turned right down the path and round the railings there were the bomb holes (that my mother said were actually open cast mining ???) Just before you got in to the woods for years there was the bottom few feet of a new house that somebody started to build. That was a large piece of the woods taken for all the new houses at the bottom of the southleighs so historically the council are slowly eating away at the woods.