Found a Photo - Holbeck Workhouse

[TABBYCAT]

The top map shows a disused pottery just to the right.
I didn't know they were that close to Beeston with Leathely Rd being the nearest, very interesting.

[jma]

My first-hand experience is based on the short period I worked from the old Dewsbury Road Police Station, just along Hunslet Hall Road from South Lodge, October 1967 to April 1972.

I think that by then, the former Marsh Lane Police Station had been in use by Social Services for a while. I see from my history of Leeds Police that the police finally left those premises in 1961, when they had been used by the Training Department since 1936. I think it was only used as emergency accommodation - I've a recollection of taking somebody there in the middle of the night.

AIUI, South Lodge had been the workhouse until the Poor Laws were repealed just after WWII. I think that in practical terms, South Lodge simply transferred from the Poor Law Guardians or whatever they were called to Leeds Social Services. Although I've been in there a few times for official reasons, my main source for family conditions there is the comments on the Leodis images I linked.

I didn't intend to imply that Shaftesbury House was men only, just that men of working age were separated from their families in social services accommodation. I think that one of the things that changed quite soon after WWII was the treatment of OAPs as they were then known, in particular there were more local authority care homes.

[tyke bhoy]

Thanks buffaloskinner, independently I had gone looking at old maps and am now not so confused. I was correct that Polo's and Kango's posted pictures are not the same building although part of the same complex. The first picture is from the Elland Road side. The 2nd is from Beeston Road and runs parallel but separate

[TABBYCAT]

The Google street view in my original (Kango) post should have ascertained where the picture was taken from I would have thought.
The houses in the background of the mounted policemen shot look very much like Moorville Grove and the steeple I would suggest belongs to Beeston Congregational Chapel situated at the junction of Beeston Road and Colville Terrace.

The trees in the chapel background are where South Lodge stood.

The chapel site today on Google street plus a map showing a building just below and to the right of the chapel that could be the domed building.

Map from side by side map viewer picture 2 from Leodis.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.78159 ... 384!8i8192

[TABBYCAT]

Possible line of sight view from the moor which works I think.

Map from side by side map viewer.

[TABBYCAT]

This angle would put South Lodge on the far left of the picture so the chimney could belong to same.

Map from side by side map viewer.

[TABBYCAT]

There is a dome in the background that may be a possibility and that is the one seen on top of Dewsbury Rd library.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.78084 ... 384!8i8192


A line of sight map that makes it at least a candidate.

Map from side by side map viewer.

[jma]

Thanks for the memory! Of course, the right-hand part of that building is the old Dewsbury Road Police Station (Thinks: I wonder what happened to the clock over the door.) That straight line reminds me that Hunslet Hall Road emerged into Beeston Road at a T junction. What's not obvious from any of the maps is that there was a big wall behind the footpath on Beeston Road directly opposite Hunslet Hall Road. When I posted earlier I assumed it was the back of the building but I realise from the maps that it must have been a big boundary wall.

Anyway, when panda cars were being introduced in Leeds, a lot of policemen couldn't drive a car and went on crash courses and crash some did. They went from trundling about at 30 mph - running-in the new cars at the same time - and were then let loose to answer emergency calls in cars fitted with blue beacons. Several came to grief against that wall.

[TABBYCAT]

Excellent anecdote JMA.

That's what I love about this site, how one thing can evoke such memories and do you know I had cause to be in Dewsbury Rd nick on a few occasions (I'm innocent Guv') and cannot remember the damn clock!

Sometime ago it became the premises of Burton Regan private investigators though what it is these days I couldn't say.

[jma]

It's interesting how the memory plays tricks. I would have confidently said that the clock was over the public entrance on the corner with Hunslet Hall Road. This leodis image from 1964 shows there was a clock but it was over the the old fire station entrance between the police station and the library.

https://www.leodis.net/viewimage/91452

I particularly remember the clock because once on nights - finishing at 0600 - having been on foot patrol when it snowed all night, our martinet inspector the late Mick Hirst sent me back out when I went into the nick with what I thought a proper reason at about 0555. I was so tired I sat down in the snow. I should have remembered that the clock wasn't on the corner because from April 1971 to April 1972 I was in the Plain Clothes Department and we occupied a tiny office behind the CID upstairs. Part of the office was taken up by a fixed ladder up to the high ceiling which had a trapdoor to give access to the clock mechanism.

The clock over a police station corner door is at the old Upper Wortley Police Station. But that's even further away from South Lodge.