4th February 1819 - First Gas Light in Leeds

[jim]

I have now read more of the new very well annotated Matthew Murray book I refer to earlier in this thread, and find that, according to the author Paul Murray Thompson's sources, Murray had "Steam Hall" built in 1804. It was on Marshall Street, opposite the later site of Marshall's"Egyptian Temple" Mill. Murray lived there until his death in 1826, and members of his family, and later Richard Jackson who took the reins of the business, lived there until just before the demolition of the building in May 1838.

The site was used as part of a new factory to build railway locomotives, of which the company built around 70 between 1831 and 1842.

On P333 the author states categorically that "Kilburn Scott's surmise that Matthew Murray lived in Holbeck Lodge was wrong" This refers of course to the 1928 publication "Matthew Murray Pioneer Engineer" by E. Kilburn Scott, which until now was the only book available on Murray, and possibly the original source of this apparently mistaken information.

It would be interesting to know of the build date of Holbeck Lodge (the building that was once in the triangle of railway lines west of Leeds City Station until it's demolition sometime in, I think, the late 1950s) and of who lived there in the 1800s.