SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

On looking up information on a building that I would have said was on Woodhouse Lane I was surprised to find its address is on Blenheim Terrace. On checking I found that (going out from Leeds) Woodhouse Lane before crossing over the Inner Ring Road splits into two roads (both called Woodhouse Lane). The left one soon becomes Blenheim Terrace but then becomes Woodhouse Lane again near the Parkinson Building and the two roads shortly merge into one called Woodhouse Lane (A660). I probably should have known all this but I did not!

"Once upon a time" the road going out of Leeds and passing the Parkinson Building on its left was all Woodhouse Lane. Blenheim Terrace was the row of buildings on the right, set back from Woodhouse Lane. The only reason I remember anything about Blenheim Terrace is that it was the address of Austick's University Bookshop.

Here's a Leodis entry which fits what I posted, except it's looking towards Leeds so Blenheim Terrace is on the left

https://www.leodis.net/viewimage/115179

I worked at 22 Blenheim Terrace which was the TGWU up until we moved to Call Lane in 2003. Next door was Nat West bank and Austicks (Blackwells) on the other side. However now it seems that it is all junk food shops with noodles, pizzas and Subway

At the back of the building is Back Blenheim Terrace.

Thanks jma and buffaloskinner for your help and interesting information.
With the partial splitting of Woodhouse Lane into two I assume the naming of those sections is to help people know which part of Woodhouse Lane they need to go to!
I've noticed that the right hand section (going out from Leeds centre) is labelled either Woodhouse Lane or Blenheim Walk (as also on the map provided by buffaloskinner) depending on which maps are seen! Postcodes will be a great help if Woodhouse Lane is given as the road address.

It isn't unusual for a terrace of old houses to have a different name to the road they are on. I can think of a couple of circumstances where this might matter.

Conversion of a road like Woodhouse Lane to one-way is authorised by a traffic regulation order (TRO) which will specify very precisely which length of carriageway is affected. Then, if somebody were to be prosecuted for going the wrong way, the TRO would be quoted in the summons. For anybody keen to know the details, TROs for Leeds roads can be inspected at the Leeds City Council Highways Department. There are loads of them and somewhere like Woodhouse Lane may be covered by more than one as they also deal with yellow line parking restrictions, bus lanes etc. so it's not something to be undertaken without a sound reason.

OTOH, postcodes are based on postal addresses - the letterboxes. Postcodes are now widely used for other purposes such as SATNAVs. I think a problem arises when a company's car park is not directly by its letterbox. Customer friendly companies quote the correct postcode for their car cark if that's helpful.

I knew this area as a former student and employee of the university. I used to eat my lunchtime sandwiches outside the Parkinson Building on fine days. My first bank account was at Barclays in Blenheim Terrace and I spent time in Austick's bookshop, gazing at books I couldn't afford.
I just assumed that Blenheim Terrace was the name of the line of houses (which must have been imposing when they were first built) and that they were on Woodhouse lane. Reading the posts above it seems as though a new road layout is highlighting the distinction between the Terrace and Woodhouse Lane.

blackprince wrote: ↑

Sun 29 May, 2022 12:29 pm

Reading the posts above it seems as though a new road layout is highlighting the distinction between the Terrace and Woodhouse Lane.

No there is no change to the road layout Blackprince just confusion that some seem to be looking for a street called Blenheim Terrace.

If you're going by Google Maps, the information is often not correct. For example until recently Queen's Square Court was marked on Google as "Upper North Street", a name I imagine that hasn't been used for many, many years.
I do wonder where they get this information from sometimes as that's quite a mistake to make.

As jma says there are often terraces that are called something different to the actual main road they are on. If you look here for example: https://goo.gl/maps/JahEws9SVVDP9gWY6 the street is Chapeltown Road, but the houses are marked as "St Martin's Terrace" on the street sign on the right hand side house.

I was looking for more information on Austick's University Bookshop and found this obituary which gives a brief history of the about the founders

https://tinyurl.com/ymp5y8zt.

Austick's bookshop was not well-liked by students in my day. The main grumbles were about cost and applying price increases to older stock. Everything was sold at the RRP and discounts were unheard of in those days.
I still have my copy of the inorganic chemistry course book which cost me 105/- from Austick's which was a small fortune in 1966. It was a new edition so you couldn't get it second hand and the library would have only a few copies if any . Austick's had a captive market for at least 120 copies of that book in one year and a few of my fellow students thought they should have negotiated a discount on a bulk order of that size and passed it on to the customers. Amazon was still 30 years in the future, no wonder it was so successful.

Opposite the Parkinson Building on Woodhouse Lane - Austicks for stationery, Ainsley's for sandwiches.
This is a great photo of the sandwich shop opposite the Parkinson Building where I used to buy my lunchtime sandwiches, before eating them sitting outside the Parkinson Building. The guy in the grey polo neck walking towards the camera on the right of the photo bears a passing resemblance to me at the time ( late 60s early 70s). I had to look twice to confirm it wasn't me.

https://tinyurl.com/3he4tb4k

The rest of this photo stream about Leeds in the 70's is well worth a look by the way. I haven't seen these before ( apologies if they have been mentioned previously on SL)