Late Victorian Burley Eight

Now we've arrived at the outer limit of the late Victorian development of Burley. Towards the city lay intricate streets of back-to-back housing, some just being built on the nearby hill; to the north was mostly farmland, beyond the little village of Kirkstall.

Burley Hill House

Continuing out of town, at the corner of the next turning on the left (Burley Hill Drive) is a single-storey stone and timber-framed house with mullioned windows. This was the former gatehouse to the old house once known as Burley Hill, where Sir James Kitson lived, now the New Burley Club, which is to be found round the corner on Burley Hill Drive. Imagine, as you walk down that road, turning right along Argie Avenue, the scene in the 1890's: woodland behind and to your left, in which nestled the house known as 'Burley Wood' of which no trace remains; farmland to your right; and, before you, the smoky chimneys of the dark, if not necessarily satanic, mills clouding the view across to Gott's Park.

Dyson House

Up a little snicket to the left, before you reach the back of Sacred Heart School, is what looks like a row of cottages. This was Dyson House, now known as Dysons Cottages. Then, retracing your steps a little, go down Burley Wood Mount. Along the right-hand side of the road is a fine crescent of mid-Victorian villas, Burley Crescent.

And then, suddenly, you are at the foot of the hill: the noise and speed of the traffic along Kirkstall Road is overwhelming: just as it would have been a century ago, with the clatter of trams and horses' hooves from Leeds to Kirkstall. On the river side of the road opposite, from mid-Victorian times, stood a row of cottages officially named Stansfield Row, but known locally as 'Dobby Row', just as the mills were known as the 'Dobby Mills'. To their left (by a modern factory, Lowe Engineering), if you dare brave the traffic, a path leads to allotments over a bridge across the mill race, or goit, that was dug to serve Burley Mill.

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