Briggate

Briggate's name comes from brycg, the Old English for bridge and gata, the Old Norse for a way or a street.[1][2] It is the road leading north from Leeds Bridge, the oldest crossing point of the River Aire, and the main street in Leeds from its formation as a borough in 1207.[3] When Leeds became a borough, land on either side of Briggate was allocated into 30 burgage plots for tradespeople to carry out their business, setting the style and layout of the street today. A burgage plot was a strip with a length of between 10 and 18 perches and a width of 3 perches, i.e. 49 ft 6 in (15.09 m) in width running east or west from the road. This spacing can still be seen on the many of the shop frontages and the buildings behind.[4] The burgesses were also allocated half-acre agricultural plots in Burmantofts (burgage men's tofts). The street developed as the commercial centre, fairs and markets were held there by the end of the 13th century, when the woollen industry was beginning to grow.[3] Leeds fair was held annually on Briggate from 1322 and from 1341 there were two.[5]

House in Lambert's Yard

In 1533, Leeds was described as "a praty market" consisting of four streets, Briggate, Kirkgate, Swinegate and Boar Lane, plus the "Head Rows".[5] Leeds' oldest building, a three-storey wooden house with a projecting upper storey in Lambert's Yard, off Lower Briggate was built in the late-16th or early-17th century.[6][7]

By the 17th century, Briggate was lined with shops, offices, workshops and houses, grand and humble. It retained its medieval street pattern,[3] but the burgage plots had been subdivided.[2] The street was wide enough to accommodate open air markets.[5] At this time the street ended in fields at what is now the Headrow and a field path continued north. John Harrison, a wealthy cloth merchant and the King's Bailiff, owned land north of Briggate. He built a town house at the north end and extended the street into what is now New Briggate, then New Street.[8] Harrison paid for a new Moot Hall and market cross by the market place on Briggate in 1615, and the grammar school on New Street in 1624. He endowed the St John's Church which opened in 1634 to the west of New Street.[3][8]

The Battle of Leeds took place principally along Briggate during the English Civil War in 1643.[9]

Queens Court

In the 18th century, Briggate housed the shambles or slaughter place and meat market described by Ralph Thoresby as "the best-furnished Flesh Shambles in the North of England". The street was lined with fine three-storey merchant's houses often with gardens and fields behind them.[5] A surviving example is Queen's Court (1714), a former cloth merchant's house and business premises with packaging workshops and warehouses behind.[10] During the 18th century, the population grew from 6000 to 25000 leading to overcrowding. Many merchants moved their homes away from Briggate to Park Square leaving their properties to be subdivided and converted for commercial use or multiple residences.[5] The lanes and yards off the street were filled with slum cottages and workplaces in the 18th and 19th centuries.[10]

Briggate in 1880

In the early-19th century, Leeds was a "smokey city, dull and dirty", with Briggate its "one large street" but in 1889 it was "one of the broadest, handsomest, and busiest thoroughfares in the North of England".[11] Leeds' commercial success led to the construction of many fine buildings, including the Grand Theatre on New Briggate in 1878. Land on Briggate, owned in the medieval form of long strips leading in both directions from the street, was suitable for the construction of shopping arcades, beginning with Thornton's Arcade in 1878.[12] The Leeds Estate Company was formed to redevelop the shambles and surrounding slums. Redevelopment was carried out from 1898 to 1904 under the direction of architect Frank Matcham who created two new streets between Briggate and Vicar Lane: Queen Victoria Street and King Edward Street. The three blocks around them included the Empire Theatre and County and Cross Arcades.[13]

Briggate in 1978

From the early 1900s trams ran along Briggate,[14] until Leeds tramways closed in 1959.[15] In 1907 a Post Office Exchange was built in brick and terracotta. It became Woolworths and an extra storey was added in 1920.[16] In 1909 Marks and Spencer opened its first store at number 76. The present store at number 47 was begun in 1939 and completed postwar in 1951.[17]

In 1910, Dyson's Jewellers added a clock with a ball that dropped down at precisely 1 p.m. and became the landmark known as the Time Ball buildings.[7] In the 1930s the Headrow became Leeds' main thoroughfare, which led to a decline in the fortunes of business in Briggate.[18] Debenhams department store arrived in 1936 on the corner with Kirkgate with an unusual zigzag pattern of windows.[19] Developments often required the demolition of old buildings,[18] including the Empire Theatre in the 1960s, to make a very plain arcade.[20] The 1980s saw the refurbishment of old buildings and the creation of the Victoria Quarter, three blocks between Briggate and Vicar Lane, comprising County Arcade, Cross Arcade, Queen Victoria Street and King Edward Street was created in September 1990.[21]

In the 1990s the arcade on the site of the Empire Theatre was demolished and a glazed frontage to link the older buildings on either side of it were refurbished to create a Harvey Nichols store in 1997.[22] Briggate was pedestrianised and closed to private vehicles in 1993, and in 1999 was paved with York stone and granite setts.[23] Lower Briggate and New Briggate remain open to traffic.

• 
  A tram on Briggate, 1958
• 
  Former 1907 Post Office Exchange
• 
  Time Ball buildings, Lower Briggate
• 
  Debenhams, with Kirkate to the right
• 
  Marks and Spencer 1951 building
• 
  Victoria Quarter entrance
• 
  Harvey Nichols, main entrance

The paving was extensively refurbished in 2007 for Leeds' 800th anniversary celebrations.[24] In 2008 the 1970s-built Burton's Arcade at the southern end of Briggate was demolished to make way for the Trinity Quarter that opened in March 2013. At the same time the Market Street Arcade at the southern end of Briggate closed for redevelopment. It was given an extra level, glass roof and new tenants and reopened in 2012 as the Central Arcade.[25]