East End Park, The Black Hill, flagstaff, and rope worked tramway

[Phill_dvsn]

From my younger days as a lad I remember playing on what I used to call 'The Black Hill' It was situated next to Neville Hill train depot at East End Park. It was a strange place, obviously man made, and it crunched under foot when walking on it, the earth was cinder like, or had the appearance of crushed coal. It's obvious today it's some kind of huge spoil waste or similar from the nearby coal mining activity. The vegetation seems to flourish rather well on it surprisingly, grass, bushes and trees seem to do rather well. I thought I'd take a look at the old maps to see if I could find out more about this man made hill. I was pleased to see it marked off in good detail, It showed three sets of stairs lead to the top of the hill at one time, another map clearly showed some kind of triangular structure on top marked as FS. I was even more surprised to see on the 1922 map that FS stood for 'flagstaff' Here is the wider aerial image to get your bearings, the Black Hill clearly visible next to the railway.A series of paths and bare earth reveal the cinder like earth underneath, the lush vegetation shows just how hardy Mother Nature really is.The 1851 map clearly shows 'coal tops' and the varying beds of coal seems to be found in the area, white bed coal, good coal, coal and dirt e.t.c.The 1893 map is what raised my curiosity, the three sets of steps meant at one time the top of the hill was obviously an important place to be, some kind of function was obviously carried out on top of the hill if they had gone to the trouble of building three sets of steps, the triangular center point looking almost like a 'trig point' looking rather interesting.The 1922 map clearly states 'flagstaff' I'm just wondering what this flagstaff actually was, and what role did it play (if any) in the nearby coal industry?        

[Phill_dvsn]

Doing a bit more research into the area, I came across some photos on Leodis I'd not seen before.This photo shows a bridge under Osmondthorpe Lane for a rope worked tramway between a coal depot near York Road, and the railway at Neville Hill North East of the Black Hill. Here is the Osmondthorpe Lane bridge just after it was built in 1928, It's photographed looking up the incline to the Coal depot near York Road. I was thinking how interesting it looked, and what a shame most of these old coal and mineral railways have very little trace of them left around Leeds today. However I thought I'd just give it a once over on Google Street view just in case. I was even more surprised to find out one of the bridge parapet walls still survives, despite passing it many times in the past and never realising what it was. Here is the bridge during construction in 1928.And surprisingly the top of the bridge still survives in 2011, the typical Leeds City Council workman sitting down and taking 5 This is viewed looking across Osmondthorpe lane down towards the railway line at Neville Hill, the course of the old tramway having a steep gradient, no wonder it was rope worked up the incline. I'm not sure when the tramway was abandoned yet, but I will try find out.Here is the location of the bridge on Google Street viewhttp://tinyurl.com/3k6txstOnce you know about something, it's often pretty easy to see how it worked on aerial images and Google Street view. Footpaths or building boundary walls/gardens often follow the path of these old railway lines. The East End Park tramway clearly defined here as a footpath between the gardens in the Rookwood estate.I've marked the course of the tramway, sidings, coal depot, Osmondthorpe Lane bridge, and the Shaftesbury pub (now demolished) on this aerial image.Good detail of the full tramway layout running under Osmondthorpe Lane here.Closer look at the tramway layout near the railway line, the subway under the main line is still a right of way from Wykebeck Avenue along the footpath on the old tramway. The rail and tramway connected to the Waterloo colliery was really quite extensive, It ran East to the Colliery itself, Northwards to this tramway and exchange sidings with the railway at Neville Hill, West along the paddy tub line to a coal depot near Easy Road, and South towards the railway at Hunslet Goods East and various coal staithes by the river Aire.                

[Phill_dvsn]

I have seen a few archive photos, and map layouts of this lost railway line, I'll add them to this thread shortly. It's an interesting railway of Leeds, It's worth documenting in detail methinks

[Leodian]

Living very nearby as a child in the late 1940s to early 1950s I used to play a lot in the area covered, particularly the path (the old incline) from Osmondthorpe Lane to the railway. I've not been there since those days so I do not know what it looks like now, but there was a spoil heap on the right of the path (coming from the Rookwoods) approaching the railway. That heap used to be used for sledging in snowy weather, always crashing onto the path there (which if I remember right had house gardens next to the path there). At or very near the area marked Osmondthorpe Colliery there was a taller spoil heap (well it seemed high as a kid) that had a small concrete structure on the top that we used to play in. I never knew what it was and it may have been the top of something almost all covered by the spoil heap (there was nothing there that went down as far as us kids knew). PS. I have no recollection at all of a small cutting and and tunnel under Osmondthorpe Lane from the 1928 construction, so that area must have been filled in before at least the late 1940s.