SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

In the 1950s they started moving the pit hills on york road and torrie road,there must have been hundreds of thousands of tons.Any one know were they went or what they were used for.

Jak wrote: In the 1950s they started moving the pit hills on york road and torrie road,there must have been hundreds of thousands of tons.Any one know were they went or what they were used for. I'm glad you remember the red hills too. There has been some discussion of these hills in the comments to the photos in Leodis.As to what happened to the pit hills - in other parts of the country the spoil was used in motorway construction and the land was reclaimed. I expect the same was true of the hills off York Rd. In fact during Harold Wilson's premiership there was a financial scandal concerning one of these land reclamation deals and people very closely connected with the PM.You can read all about it in an article from TIME magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -1,00.html

blackprince wrote: Jak wrote: In the 1950s they started moving the pit hills on york road and torrie road,there must have been hundreds of thousands of tons.Any one know were they went or what they were used for. I'm glad you remember the red hills too. There has been some discussion of these hills in the comments to the photos in Leodis.As to what happened to the pit hills - in other parts of the country the spoil was used in motorway construction and the land was reclaimed. I expect the same was true of the hills off York Rd. In fact during Harold Wilson's premiership there was a financial scandal concerning one of these land reclamation deals and people very closely connected with the PM.You can read all about it in an article from TIME magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -1,00.html thaks for that blackprince i often wondered what they did with it all that shale but they were moving them in the mid 50s, idont think they were making moterways then.

Jak wrote: blackprince wrote: Jak wrote: In the 1950s they started moving the pit hills on york road and torrie road,there must have been hundreds of thousands of tons.Any one know were they went or what they were used for. I'm glad you remember the red hills too. There has been some discussion of these hills in the comments to the photos in Leodis.As to what happened to the pit hills - in other parts of the country the spoil was used in motorway construction and the land was reclaimed. I expect the same was true of the hills off York Rd. In fact during Harold Wilson's premiership there was a financial scandal concerning one of these land reclamation deals and people very closely connected with the PM.You can read all about it in an article from TIME magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -1,00.html thaks for that blackprince i often wondered what they did with it all that shale but they were moving them in the mid 50s, idont think they were making moterways then. I don't know what they were using the shale for in the 50'sIt takes a bit of digging to find all the pit hill photos and comments on Leodis ( the search engine misses a few ) so here they are http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... FULLAerial view:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... AY=FULLPic of the Shaftsbury but lots of the comments are about the pit hillshttp://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIde ... LAY=FULLAs it is today:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates????

grumpytramp wrote: BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates???? Yes, the first photo of the furnaces, with the "pit hills" in the background tells the whole story. I assume that the iron works generated the slag for the "red hills" but the adjacent "black hills" were typical of spoil heaps from coal mining.Although the York road furnaces were long gone in my childhood I am familiar with the type . During my school holidays I actually visited    a small foundry, with furnaces just like these, which was only short walk from the centre of Bradford. They were built into the side of a hill so that they could be loaded with coal and scrap iron from a road at a higher level. I remember wheelbarrowing in a few loads of scrap iron myself.

grumpytramp wrote: BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates???? Re the second photo - looks like a cable railway ( "funicular") with the cable guides or rollers between the tracks. If they operated it with 2 wagons, there would have been a short passing place with twin tracks in the middle of the incline. Any sign of this on the early maps ?

grumpytramp wrote: BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates???? GT you never fail to dissapoint me.Thanks for identifying the green iron furnace slag I spoke about, when I showed it to a University lecturer he recognised it straight away as "calcium silicate" with the sandstone based ironstone fused to the calcium of the limestone flux. (I may have that wrong)He tried to explain why it was green as Iron usually colours red and so we have the intro to my pointRed hills and black hills. Sure the black hills are the usual shale and of course as a coal mine at some point it's typical coal mine heaps.Was the "red hills" from the iron coloured fireclay that would almost certainly be involved here??At West Yorkshire Colliery pit hills at Austhorpe there's a lot of red clay/shale waste.After all the bricks of Leeds are all red and of the fireclay mined from this area.Your intriguing thoughts please??As for the incline it was from osmondthorpe colliery up the incline to a staithe on York Road.The path of the incline is still there today as a path through the ossie estate.For a local funicular railway that's a great thought. The Miggy Railway was run "funicularly" with a big cable drum - Leodis has the double track and the cable photos on there.The line of that is also a line of paths and steps......

blackprince wrote: grumpytramp wrote: BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates???? Re the second photo - looks like a cable railway ( "funicular") with the cable guides or rollers between the tracks. If they operated it with 2 wagons, there would have been a short passing place with twin tracks in the middle of the incline. Any sign of this on the early maps ? Yes BP check out the funicular from Miggy Broom pit up to staithes in Miggy on Leodis.Great idea that the Ossie incline would probably have been worked that way.

The Parksider wrote: blackprince wrote: grumpytramp wrote: BlackprinceHere is probably the most important image:http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... =FULLwhich show the cupola furnaces of York Road Iron Works. Having had a good scan through the OS Maps of 1854, 1894, 1909 and 1938 on Old-maps.co.uk I suspect that the majority of this spoil was generated by the York Road Iron Works. The 1854 plan a coal pit just to the west of Harehills Lane (Black Bed at 15 yards depth) and another to the east of Terrace Cottage (? Torre Cottage) (Better Bed at 110 yds). It is likely that the Black Bed working created the original source material (iron & coal) for the York Road Iron Works. By 1894 both pits are covered by the extensive spoil heaps known as the 'pit hills' and the York Road Iron Works appears to be an extensive enterprise apparenly linked by an incline to Osmondthorpe Colliery (or to a coal staithe on York Road see http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL )As for where it went?It was probably considered acceptable fill for any possible engineering fill in the general vicinity ............. the Seacroft Centre, the A64 New York Road, infrastructure for Halton Moor or Gipton estates???? Re the second photo - looks like a cable railway ( "funicular") with the cable guides or rollers between the tracks. If they operated it with 2 wagons, there would have been a short passing place with twin tracks in the middle of the incline. Any sign of this on the early maps ? Yes BP check out the funicular from Miggy Broom pit up to staithes in Miggy on Leodis.Great idea that the Ossie incline would probably have been worked that way. Thanks Parksider & GT for pointing me to the Leodis photos of the funicular railway at Middleton colliery, well worth a look -BP