About half a mile from the town is Lockwood Spa, of strongly sulphurous waters, for which a set of handsome buildings have been provided.
LEEDS.
LEEDS, seventeen miles from Huddersfield, is the centre of five railways, by which it has direct connection with Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, on the east, and Carlisle on the west coast, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, and Birmingham, in the Midland counties, possesses one of the finest central railway stations in the kingdom, and has also the advantage of being in the centre of inland navigation (a great advantage for the transport of heavy goods), as it communicates with the eastern seas by the Aire and Calder navigation to the Humber, and westward by the Leeds and Liverpool to the Mersey. The town stands on a hill, which rises from the banks of the river Aire. Leeds has claims to antiquity, but few remains. When Domesday Book was compiled it appears to have been an agricultural district.
Wakefield was formerly the more important town. Lord Clarendon, in 1642, speaks of Leeds, Halifax, and Bradford, “as three very rich and populous towns, depending wholly upon clothing.”
The first charter was granted to Leeds by Charles I., and the second by Charles II., on petition of the clothworkers, merchants, and others, “to protect them from the great abuses, defects and deceits, discovered and practised by fraudulent persons in the making, selling, and dyeing of woollen cloths.”
The principal manufacture of Leeds is woollen cloth. Formerly the trade was carried on by five or six thousand small master clothiers, who employed their own families, and some thirty or forty thousand servants, and also carried on small farms. But the extension of the factory system has somewhat diminished their numbers. There are still, however, in connection with Leeds, several small clothing villages, in which the first stages of the operation are carried on, in spinning, weaving, and fulling.
Large quantities of worsted goods are brought to Leeds to be finished and dyed, which have been purchased, in an undyed state, at Bradford and Halifax. The dye-houses and dressing-shops of Leeds are very extensive. Goods purchased in a rough state in the Cloth Halls and Piece Halls are taken there to be finished. There are also extensive mills for spinning flax for linen, canvas-sailing, thread, and manufactures of glass and earthenware. In connection with Messrs. Marshall’s flax factory, the same firm are carrying on extensive experiments near Hull in growing flax.
Cloth Halls.—Previous to 1711, the cloth market was held in the open street. In 1755, the present Halls were erected, and in them the merchants purchase the half manufactured article from the country manufacturers.
The Coloured Cloth Hall is a quadrangular building, 127½ yards long, and 66 broad, divided into six departments called streets. Each street contains two rows of stands, and each stand measures 22 inches in front, and is inscribed with the name of the clothier to whom it belongs. The original cost was £3. 3s. This price advanced to £24 at the beginning of the present century; but it has now fallen below its original value—not owing to a decrease in the quantity of manufactured goods, but owing to the prevalence of the factory system—in which the whole operation is performed, from sorting the piece to packing the cloth fit for the tailor’s shelves—over the domestic system of manufacturing. An additional story, erected on the north side of the Coloured Cloth Hall, is used chiefly for the sale of ladies’ cloths in their undyed state. The White Cloth Hall is nearly as large as the Coloured Cloth Hall, and on the same plan. The markets are held on Tuesdays and Saturdays, on which days alone the merchants are permitted to buy in the Halls. The time of the sale is in the forenoon, and commences by the ringing of a bell, when each manufacturer is at his stand, the merchants go in, and the sales commence. At the end of an hour the bell warns the buyers and sellers that the market is about to close, and in another quarter of an hour the bell rings a third time, and the business of the day is terminated. The White Cloth Hall opens immediately after the other is closed, and the transactions are carried on in a similar manner.
The public buildings of Leeds are not externally imposing, and it is, without exception, one of the most disagreeable-looking towns in England—worse than Manchester; it has also the reputation of being very unhealthy to certain constitutions from the prevalence of dye-works.