SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

There are still in Leeds some of those old small thick opaque glass features on pavements and in arcades. Some of the features are broken but other than space I'd never seen anything on a look down. While walking along Templar Place today (Sept 20 2016) I spotted one that was broken so had a look down and saw it had rubbish in it (probably not too surprising!) so I took these photos (I got an odd look from someone passing by!). I also now know that at least some may not be over deep basements/cellars that I had expected (perhaps this one was but it has been sealed off below ground level at some stage?).

These are/were smoke vents, which firemen could smash to allow smoke to clear from a basement.
They were usually glass bricks which would be weather proof and allow some light into the basement.
Early smoke protection was not much better than a gas mask, which cleaned the air, but did not replenish the oxygen that the fire had used up. Modern self contained breathing apparatus allows firefighters to penetrate further into a building and fans with flexible trunking have been introduced as the method of clearing smoke.

Some years ago King Edward and Queen Victoria Street all had these set in the pavement outside their windows and I recall being in the basement of the shop where I worked and when two or three people were window shopping overhead they blocked out quite a deal of light . The glass squares had different patterns on, some were plain whilst others were round like bottle bottoms
I should remember them as the shop manager had me out with a mop and bucket most mornings.

Thanks warringtonrhino and volvojack for your input .

I have wondered what the features were, so now I know. It seems that where at least part is exposed that they now provide a depository for litter. As much of the rubbish in my earlier photo is too large to easily fall in I guess most of it was deliberately dropped in, so at least it was not dropped on the street. I wonder if the rubbish will just accumulate over they years? Perhaps when the area gets redeveloped the features will simply be filled over and then await an interesting archaeological dig in hundreds of years .