In search of Melville Street

I just about remember the Silver Jubilee of 1977. It was 25 years since the Queen's accession to the throne, and the country went nuts for it. I know people who grew up in ardent Welsh Nationalist families who had street parties with red white and blue bunting.

It is gratifying to note that nobody did anything much for the Golden Jubilee and most people here won't even have noticed it or be able to recall when it was without doing the maths in their head. I don't know how we can call ourselves democratic whilst giving power, wealth and respect to people because they're the vague descendants of thieves and murderers. I'm glad we're making them pay a bit of tax whilst we ignore them all the more.

I always assumed that the Jubilee Social Club in Woodhouse got its name from being built in 1977. It certainly looks like a chunk of unimaginative functional 70s architecture. But now I'm guessing that it's a nod to Jubilee road, Street, Mount and Terrace that used to stand nearby, where the Elthams now stand.

The Jubilee Social Club is built on the site of several stumpy rows of terraces perpendicular to Melville Place; the end of Melville Street, and Viscount Street, Viscount Place and Viscount Terrace. So it would have been more accurate to call it the Viscount Social Club, but I suspect so aristocratic a name sat uneasily with working mens' club sensibilities.

For those unfamiliar, the bits of Leeds built in the 19th century tend to have groups of street names. You'll get Brudenell Road, Street, Mount, Avenue, View and Grove all adjacent.

This method has it's pros and cons. It's awful if you're trying to remember it, (did they say it was Brudenell Mount? Or Grove? er...), but it also makes a neat subdivision of areas, so you refer to someone living in 'The Brudenells' and because you've seen so many streets you get the idea without having to have a precise knowledge.

Incidentally, 'Brudenell' always sounds like mild or archaic swearing to me, as in 'what the brudenell do you think you're doing?'

There is another Leeds convention, cross streets. So you'll get Louis Street and then a narrower street perpendicular to it is called Cross Louis Street.

The main road from Hyde Park Corner through Woodhouse down to Meanwood Road is called Woodhouse Street at the start, for obvious reasons. But as it passes the Chemic it becomes Melville Road, then for the last bit after the junction with Melville Place it becomes Cross Chancellor Street. Makes me picture Alistair Darling with a real mardy face.

That's because the sharp right turn at the Chemic is the rest of Woodhouse Street. The road as we know it today is the result of the demolition and remodelling of that lower part of Woodhouse. We still have Cross Speedwell Street, even though Speedwell Street has gone.

The new houses built on the Melvilles were given names in the series - Melville Close and Gardens, as is the case with the new Marian Terrace on the site of the Marians.

The Chemic on Johnston Street gets its name from Johnston's Chemical Works that stood on the street. It was demolished in about 1890 according to one source, though I'm sure I read somewhere else it was 1920 (using 'I'm sure' in that sense that means 'I'm not sure'). The Marians were subsequently built on the site. This is why the Marians are newer than the surrounding terraces.

A picture from 1959 shows houses on Johnston Street looking like the same sort of sandstone buildings as the Chemic. The older buildings all along the Meanwood valley are easily distinguished by their sandstone, presumably from the sandstone quarries that were on either side of the valley in the early 19th century.

This whole area between Woodhouse Street and Meanwood Road, around the Melvilles and Marians, is marked on the mid 19th century map as open land called Woodhouse Carr (a carr being marshy or boggy moor). The name is still on modern maps, though I've never heard anybody use it.

It seems as if the majority - literally - of Woodhouse is not the original buildings. Much of it appears to have been demolished and redeveloped in the 60s and 70s. The fabulous Leodis archive has that picture of the house Mary Gawthorpe was born and brought up in, but it is not at all easy to locate it on the ground. A few streets are in the same place, others have had their course changed and a great many have been erased entirely.

I've done a bit of a rudimentary calculation (looking at the 1908 Ordnance Survey map whilst having Google Earth up on screen with a ruler!), and it appears that 5 Melville Street was just inside the entrance to Melville Gardens. Walk in from Melville Place on the right, and as the pavement starts to curve right for the first cul-de-sac, you're stood on 5 Melville Street. I think.

The 10 Rillington Place site has some thunderously impressive research. It faces the same sort of problem, ie that the whole area has been remodelled and bears no relation to the original. But with diligence, maps and Photoshop they figured it out.

I'll scan a modern map of Woodhouse Carr and do an overlay of it with the 1908 one so we can see it clearly.