Sunday, April 22, 2007

Word



My Leeds words (with a few digressions) are:

Trade/Commerce…2 for the price of 1
Finance
Buliding (Subwords: Red brick, Portland stone, concrete, glass)
Crowds
Club Culture

A little while ago I read a book about the history of Leeds and was interested in how Briggate was created in 1207 when the Lord of the Manor of Leeds, split the area up into burgage plots. (Eva will recall that a man mentioned this too at an otherwise boring Chatshow presentation!).

2 things about this interest me.
1) Tenants paid for their plots with money, not agricultural labour. This helped Leeds develop as a commercial centre because tenants had time to pursue a trade.
2) The long narrow shape of the burgage plots meant that yards and buildings have followed this shape. So their legacy can still be seen in the street today. Recently reading a planning proposal for a new development of the “Eastgate and Harewood Quarter” (where Chinese arcade and car parking currently is, extending down to markets) one of the justifications given for needing this development was that the size of buildings on Briggate provided limited retail space, not big enough for today’s stores.

(If you want to read more about burgage plots see: http://www.leodis.org/discovery/discovery.asp?pageno=&page=2003218_676159084&topic=2003218_465999783).

Not sure how this will turn into a badge, but it’s a possible beginning! Also I had the idea of doing an image that shows the historical growth of the city centre. Probably it would appear as patches of different colours representing the shape of the centre as it expanded. I wonder when postcodes got created and if they ever change or grow?

Another interesting focus might be the markets?

I haven’t been to take photos in town yet, but here is a map showing burgage plot layout and an image I quite like that I already had.

No comments: