Origins Of Burley Four

Gott may well, in addition, have been a prime mover in the opening of another turnpike, Kirkstall Road, in 1806: a flatter, easier route from Leeds to Kirkstall Bridge than Burley Road, though more liable to flooding, and running close to the Dobby Mill. Only a few hundred yards towards Leeds from the mill, the Cardigan Arms was first recorded in 1798. The then innkeeper was Mrs Mary Craven, widow, who owned two messuages (houses with outbuildings), a bowling green and ten acres of land. Later the two cottages were knocked together to form the pub, a handy stop for travellers out of Leeds just before the turnpike gates.

The Cardigan had no local rival until the Rising Sun, a few hundred yards nearer town, opened for business in 1834. By then horse-drawn 'buses were going past from Boar Lane to Kirkstall three days a week, supplementing the regular stage-coaches that ran to Bradford through Kirkstall. Between the pubs and the city, mills, factories and back-to-backs to house the workers and their families began to spring up.

But Burley itself remained, in the words of a contemporary, 'a neat rural hamlet of scattered houses and villas'. The population was, however, sufficient to give rise to a call for local schooling of the poor. A plot of land was donated by the Earl of Cardigan;
v763 9s 8d raised by public subscription; the Burley Church School, at the corner of Burley Road and Cardigan Lane, opened in 1847.

This was also the year that saw the landscape of the valley transformed by the construction of the Leeds & Thirsk Railway. The 23-arch viaduct was completed in March 1849, and in July of that year the first passengers looked out from the carriages of their steam train over Burley towards the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey.

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