Subject: Sheepscar 1893

[daveklepper]

This photo is unbelievable, as this place is unrecognisable today. David Young, a (Leeds) tram expert has sent me this information:

and sending separately a present day photo, both sent by IK Brunel
Now, this photo. Yes I've seen it many times over the years, but orienting yourself may be tricky, especially if you believe neither Chapeltown and Roundhay Roads had been built.  By the date of this picture (1893), they had. Sheepscar Library built in 1938 (IE the present building), replaced one of two of the buildings on the left. It stands to this day in splendid isolation, a brick oasis in a sea of traffic interchanges. All else was swept away.

 

The Ablesons had a yard at the end of Sheepscar Street South, where they sold garden sheds and the like. The photographer has more or less plonked himself on that site and pointed his camera up Roundhay Road. This is about 1893, and the tram was one of the privately-owned Roundhay Electric Tramway's. This opened at the end of 1891. The tram tracks (owned by the city since they were built in the 1870s) continue to the right into North Street and town, but the electric cars terminated here at Sheepscar on a short single track, separate from the main tram lines.

 

The tram is leaving that siding to run wrong way on Roundhay Road for a hundred yards, and then will swing onto the left hand tracks at a crossover and proceed to Harehills and Oakwood, where there was/is an entrance to Roundhay Park. It didn't go as far as the Park Gates. Only the horse and steam trams did that. On the other hand, it had a branch along Harehills Road, passing Stanley Road (where its depot was) and ran down Beckett Street almost to York Road in Burmantofts, serving what there was then of St. James Hospital. Again, the tracks were always owned by the city.

 

It did very well until 1896, when it was closed, upgraded to Leeds City Tramways standards (the city had bought out all the private companies running horse, steam and electric trams in the city during 1894 to create the municipal Tramways Department) then reopened in 1897 as a municipal tramway from Roundhay Park Gates, down Roundhay Road, Golden Cross, Sheepscar, North Street, Briggate, Boar Lane, what there was then of City Square, Wellington Street and Kirkstall Road to the Abbey.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: THE CHIEF MECHANICAL ENGINEER. <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 30 May 2021 at 22:36
Subject: SHEEPSCAR 1893

 

[pennytrains]

Picturesque town on the verge of dynamic change.  Not all for the better?

[Flintlock76]

pennytrains

Picturesque town on the verge of dynamic change.  Not all for the better?

 

Not if the Luftwaffe had anything to do with it.

[daveklepper]

Note trolley-pole operation. 

I wonder when Leeds switched to bow-collectors?