Far Headingley

...and The Ridge.

People have a lot of pre-conceived ideas about the industrial north of England,they think it's all mean streets and endless red brick terraces. I'm hoping this post about the part of Leeds where I grew up will change some of those stereotypical ideas. Far Headingley has street after street of beautifully proportioned early Victorian houses and terraces and I took a nostalgic stroll around with my camera during a recent visit. 

This is the house where I spent my early childhood - we lived in the top half of it. Many will have heard of Headingley as home to a famous cricket ground, but Far Headingley is a different kettle of fish. Originally a separate village - and still with cottages dating from the 18th century or before - it became joined to the rest of Leeds by the construction of huge mansions and villas erected by the wealthy industrialists - mostly in the field of textile manufacture - who spear-headed the Industrial Revolution in this area of Yorkshire. 

In my (sadly) infrequent visits to Far Headingley, I am taken aback anew by how leafy and green it is. All the houses have gardens front and back with mature trees everywhere. 

As a child I was fascinated by this corner door - just down the road from our house - it seemed, and seems, a quite bizarre architectural quirk. But it's precisely this kind of detailing which makes the area so interesting - there are literally no two houses the same and that's a wonderful change from where I live in London with street after identical street of late Victorian terraces.

A classic Victorian villa. Far Headingly lies to the north west of the city and the rich built their house here out of the way of the prevailing wind which carried pollution from the factory chimneys miles across the town.

Note the beautiful profile of the garden wall.

Far Headingley has many wonderful terraces, each with its own character. They sometimes run at tangents to the main streets with their own private paths for access. The houses are large with cellars and attics (for the servants) and often have communal gardens at the front.

This is one of the very early cottages.

My friend Susanna lived here (an artist too - see her studio and house) so I spent a lot of time in this gorgeous house when I was a child.

In most of London no one has front gardens and if they do they just pave them over and park their cars or tip out a load of incongruous pebbles in the interests of 'fashion'. I really miss the Leeds front gardens with lawns and borders which people enjoy tending and which are a visual joy for neighbours and passers by.

Every terrace has its own distinctive character dependant on the whims of the Victorian architect - this one has elegant stone detailng over the front doors.

You can't really believe this is in a city!

More of the early 19th century cottages - these would have been for workers at the mills and tanneries in the area.

Classic Headingley terrace with a backdrop of trees.

This is what I mean by communal gardens, by not dividing the area with walls or fences it feels more spacious and is reminiscent of a grand country house garden - which I'm sure was the idea. The little sloping lawns with steps are absolutely typical.

This beautiful terrace is at a 90 degree angle to the street and has a little gated path for access running along the front. Front lawns are always a feature and provide a simple and perfect foil to the stone work and architectural detailing.

More communal gardens. And note the castellation on the roof line - this was popular in the mid-Victorian period and no doubt was another device to create a grand effect.

These bay windows are absolutely typical Far Headingley. The windows come low to the ground flooding the rooms with light. Drawing rooms are usually large and square with high ceilings and wonderful proportions. I wish, I wish I could move one of these houses to London!

.....The Ridge....

There's an unusual - but typically Leeds - piece of wild land running for about 2 miles between Far Headingley and Woodhouse Moor, near the centre of town. Leeds is a very hilly city - which of course makes the vistas really interesting - and The Ridge is a deeply wooded escarpment only accessible by footpaths which criss-cross it and run along the top. This house is perched on the highest part of the ridge and looks down over the trees to hills on the other side of Meanwood valley. What a place to live!

This incredibly long wall runs all along the top of the Ridge. Leeds is fantastic for walls, they are beautiful I think. This one always makes me think of the painting by 19th century Leeds artist Atkinson Grimshaw - 'Shadows on the Park Wall'. So atmospheric. Have a look at more of his paintings of Leeds and Yorkshire.  Atkinson Grimshaw lived on road just off the Ridge.

Leeds is riddled with ginnels!  A ginnel, as you can see, is a narrow footpath between buildings or gardens which connects various parts of a locale and gives access to places not accessible by car (or cart or carriage back in the day). I love ginnels!  You can thread your way into all kinds of hidden corners of Headingley and The Ridge via these fantastic arteries. I think modern town-planners should bring back the ginnel when laying out new developments, it's great to go on foot through human-scale passages rather than feel dwarfed an manipulated by huge out-of-scale urban environments.

The ginnel just shown cuts away out of the Ridge to the crest of a hill to which a number of streets climb from a main road below. This area was one of the most exclusive Victorian enclaves and the size of the houses is staggering.

I don't think there are any which are still occupied by a single family, most of them now belong to Leeds University and some are Halls of Residence - lucky students!

I would love this drawing room with two huge bay windows. Some of these terraces have no proper vehicular access as the roads are rough and semi-cobbled. They weren't built in the times when people had cars to park bang outside their front door. That's one of the reasons the terraces are so beautiful- no ugly cars to spoil the scene.

This is one of the roads where the massive villas are - they are all cul-de-sacs as they end in the woodland of the Ridge. When I stroll on these wide empty streets I like to imagine the clattering carriages bringing back the ladies of the house from visits to friends and the patriarch returning from a busy day at he factory! These guys made a lot of money it's plain to see!

You may have been wondering about the exact type and source of the special black stone from which the houses are built. Well here's the thing - they're all built from local yellow sandstone and it's more than a century of fierce pollution from the many factories which coloured them black. The one above has been cleaned but I much prefer them in 'Leeds grey'! 

This ginnel is truly amazing - it runs at a diagonal between two of the streets I was describing. Look at the little bridge which hops between communal terrace gardens on one side and the kitchen gardens on the other.

Faded glory.  Not in use any more but an evocative reminder of the very affluent  former times of this wonderfully preserved and beautiful area of Leeds.  

I'm very proud of my home town and I urge you to go and inspect this fantastic architecture for yourselves - get off the train at Leeds station and hop straight on to the No 1 bus to Far Headingley!

Collapsing cottages, Normandy

'If you have tears, prepare to shed them now' .... if you're a lover ancient, vernacular architecture that is.

Cottage 1

We spend every New Year in Normandy where we rent a beautiful old half-timbered regional 'longere' (long house). We go on long walks and have had plenty of opportunity to witness the tortured, gradual decay of similar centuries-old houses throughout the landscape.

Why oh why oh why???? We ask ourselves as each year we see them sink further and further into the earth.

(excuse the blurriness of the odd photo, some they were taken on maximum zoom from a long way away)

  Cottage 2

Hard to even be sure there is a building under all that ivy!

Cottage 3

Just look at the scale of this wonderful roof and imagine the massive beams used in its construction. I really hate to see the work of the skilled carpenters and builders of the past disrespected with out a second thought.

Cottage 4

Cottage 5

This is one of the saddest of all. It's just down the lane from the cottage we stay in, and each year we visit there's less and less of it left standing. The terribly tragic thing about this one is that the charming couple from whom we rent our cottage (they are ex-antique dealers so you can imagine our interior!) tried repeatedly to buy this empty cottage from the farmer who owned it but to no avail! They wanted to restore it and rent it as a holiday gite and they would have done a spectacular job. I don't know how they can stand to drive past it every day!

You can see from this shot that the house is one room deep and there are windows on both sides - that's part of the charm of the Normandy 'longeres' - the rooms are nice and light and you can catch the morning and evening sun.

Yes, we get the picture!

House 6

This is more of farmhouse than a cottage but its situation is equally tragic.  We spotted it was empty last year and this year we spotted it has a sad-looking 'for sale' sign outside. We sneaked through the rusty gate to have a peek and I'm glad we did because when (or if!) somebody buys it no doubt they will 'restore' it to within an inch of its life, discarding all its character into the bargain - well that's what usually happens in France anyway.

I put my camera lens right up against the window glass to take these interior shots - hence they are a bit fuzzy, but you get the picture.  I was staggered by the interior which looks to have been unchanged for decades.

What period do these faux finishes date back to I wonder? They could be 1940s. Unbelievable.

A beautiful wooden staircase and the stained glass is gorgeous.  I reckon these farmers were pretty successful and built themselves a very elegant house - which makes its abandonment even more heart-breaking.

Another fantastic tiled ceramic floor. Please don't rip it out next owners!!!!

Yes, I definitely think these people took great pride in their farm and house - these are all the awards they won for their prize cows!

I did find it terrible sad to think that this family had come to the end of its line and their farmhouse left to rot - or end up in the hands of strangers.

This is the back of the house.

This is the view into the little back kitchen through the door above. I found this room particularly poignant with the old sieve and broom.

....the state of the west wing of the house. Despair!

Fantastic iron staircases on both wings. What a sorry, sorry destiny for this once-proud Normandy farmhouse.

cottage 7

On and on it goes......

This was bang in the middle of a working farm - I wonder if the occupants event notice their beautiful collapsing barn any more?

Beautiful - and typical - tiny red Normandy bricks - what a waste. When people in the area (like lots of rural France) build themselves new house they are usually rendered and painted a sickly peach. I'm just saying!

Cottage 8

...and hand-made roof tiles, all irregular and characterful.

Barn 9

All the original barns are made of wattle and daub - and they are still standing! Unless, that is, they're unlucky enough to come under the ownership of farmers who can't be bothered with a bit of basic up-keep. I just hate to think of the wasted work of the previous generations who  built these wonderful agricultural buildings and who presumably took pride in contributing to the vernacular architecture of their region.

No doubt you've got to the end of this and like me, are asking the same question i.e. why, why, why ??? I think sometimes the reason is to do with complicated French inheritance tax laws but otherwise the only conclusion one can draw is that some French people simply don't value their architectural vernacular heritage - and it's a crying shame!

Good news!!! I am totally delighted to have my erstwhile blog helper, Adelina, back on the case! Adelina helped me while she was studying for her design degree in England but has since returned to Romania where (as I predicted!) she is now pursuing a very successful career in the interior design and architecture world - see her website definitelydesign.daportfolio.com .  

I was drowning under a sea of work in my studio, preparing for my solo exhibition in April and my blog was going west so I sent Adelina an SOS and I was thrilled that she's agreed to help out again. She has an amazing flair for creating a visual story from a disparate pile of images - my last post on Budapest was her arrangement and she did a million times better than I could have.  So thanks Adelina!! Im so happy you're back on the case!!!!