Now! Then! 2025! - A Yorkshire Almanac

Excerpt

A very high flood occurred in the River Aire on the 21st of October. Water Lane, together with all the other streets and lanes near the Leeds Bridge, were rendered impassable to anything but boats. The bridges of Calverley and Swillington, above and below Leeds, were destroyed, and a singular circumstance is related of a hare, which escaped alive on the body of a drowned sheep. The height to which the water rose is preserved by a notice at the end of Water Lane, under which is a line showing that the water rose seven feet above the crown of the paving.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Comment

Water Lane used to extend from Bridge Road in Holbeck past the Victoria Bridge to Leeds Bridge, but much of the eastern part is now submerged under the dismal Asda House.

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Original

A very high flood occurred in the river Aire on the 21st of October, this year. Water-lane, together with all the other streets and lanes near the Leeds bridge, were rendered impassable to anything but boats. The bridges of Calverley and Swillington, above and below Leeds, were destroyed, and a singular circumstance is related of a hare, which escaped alive on the body of a drowned sheep. The height to which the water rose is preserved by a notice at the end of Water-lane, entering from the bridge, thus: – “1775, October 21st, Flood,” under which is a line showing that the water rose seven feet above the crown of the paving.

112 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Bridge (3) ·
• 📌Calverley (7) ·
• Drowning (24) ·
• Flood (12) ·
• Hare (5) ·
• 📌Holbeck (10) ·
• John Nicholson (poet) (4) ·
• Leeds Bridge (4) ·
• 📌Leeds (247) ·
• Poetry (74) ·
• River Aire (27) ·
• Sheep (28) ·
• Swillington (2) ·

All tags.

Similar

14 April 1843: John Nicholson, “the Airedale Poet,” “the Bingley Baron,” dies after falling into the Aire while drunk

20 September 1853: Ballad composed for the inauguration this day of Titus Salt’s palace for the manufacture of woollen fabrics

19 October 1816: Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

9 June 1758: Entry into law of the first dedicated railway enabling act, for Richard Humble and Charles Brandling’s wagonway from Middleton Colliery to the Aire at Leeds

18 April 1969: David Oluwale, a mentally ill Nigerian rough sleeper, drowns in the Aire while fleeing from two Leeds policemen who had beaten and abused him

23 January 1720: Mr Robertson demonstrates his ultra-compact inflatable boat on the Aire at Leeds

10 September 1855: Leeds celebrates the fall of Sevastopol during the Crimean War

8 July 1840: Hairdresser John Kitching of Wellington Road, Hunslet (Leeds) misinterprets the disposal by the murderer of the corpse of rag merchant William Rothery in the Aire as the drowning of a dog

2 September 1824: Following a summer drought, Patrick Brontë witnesses a peat bog collapse and flood four miles away at Crow Hill

11 March 1864: An inhabitant of Bacon Island survives the Great Sheffield Flood