The Role of Passenger Transport in Leeds' Urban Geography
Around Leeds a well-integrated network of stage-coach services was providing a useful and efficient system of inter-urban and regional passenger transport from the late eighteenth century onwards, but the first really serious attempt to institute urban transport, operating at more intensive frequencies over shorter distances and at relatively cheaper fares, does not appear until the establishment of the horse-bus service to Far Headingley some time between 1837 and 1839. This route was soon joined by similar services to Chapeltown, Kirkstall (via Burley Road) and Hunslet. Regular use of these services was, however, inhibited by the fairly high fares and starting times which precluded their use for commuting by all save the managerial classes. Nevertheless, for middle-class families not yet able to afford their own transport, the horse-bus opened up new opportunities for suburban living, and the building during the mid-nineteenth century of substantial terrace houses in areas such as that around the present University or in New Leeds, east of Chapeltown Road, must surely be connected with the utilisation of this facility.
Example
of an early horse tram in Leeds
The age of the horse-bus came to a close in 1870 with the construction, by a private company, of five horse-tramway routes to Far Headingley, Chapeltown, Hunslet, Kirkstall (via Kirkstall Road) and Marsh Lane. The last three routes served artisan areas whose custom the company hoped to encourage. The existing horse-bus services moved outwards to outlying villages such as Armley and Roundhay and into the newly developing areas at Beeston Hill and along the Dewsbury Road. The reduction in fares in the 1890s saw the increased use of urban passenger transport by the working classes and its further expansion into inner city areas such as Little London and Burmantofts.
The climax to this twenty-year period of almost continual expansion of urban passenger transport in Leeds came in 1894 when the tramways were taken over by the Corporation and electrified. Horse-trams had become obsolete by 1901 and steam-trams by 1902. More important than electrification, however, was the attitude of new owners to services and fares. Special workmen's fares were introduced shortly after the take-over. Half-penny fares appeared in 1905, and between 1894 and 1906 a penny stage increased (on average) from 1563 yards to 2 miles. It is therefore likely that in Leeds really large-scale use of urban transport by the masses probably dates from around the turn of the century during the early period of Corporation tramway ownership.
Another major factor which greatly increased tramway patronage at this time was the construction of further important extensions to the system, both in the inner areas on old bus routes and also to outlying villages and towns. Between 1900 and 1911 the routes which were opened to Morley, Stanningley, Pudsey, Horsforth, Guiseley, Rothwell and Wakefield offered not only urban transport but inter-urban transport, and with the usual very reasonable fares these services heralded the onset of the modern conurbation characterised by considerable daily passenger movements over distances of several miles. Tramlines had become the very skeleton of most of Britain's conurbations and it is worth remembering in this context that the Leeds routes were merely one end of a system which ultimately extended to Liverpool and Blackburn.
The development of the tramway networks of Leeds had a marked impact of the physical and social structure of the city. Initial developments in tram transport encouraged new suburban development on land immediately adjacent to routes running between established middle-class traffic sources, such as Headingley and Chapeltown, and the city. After 1870 as routes increased and fares cheapened there was so much of this new land available that factors other than transport, e.g. the willingness of an owner to sell or develop his land, were more likely to dominate the result. The American practice of tramway construction into undeveloped areas specifically to encourage building has no parallel in Leeds, although the Corporation did attempt extensions to Halton Dial, from West Park to Lawnwood, and from Moortown to Roundhay, to encourage some development, perhaps to prevent uncontrolled ribbon development along the tramway radials.
Although attention here has focused on the tramways, railways had been developing since the 1830s. However, the railways played a relatively small role in the shaping of Leeds and its region. In London the great attraction which the railways had to offer over other forms of city transport was speed, but in Leeds, which was only 4 miles across in 1908, this advantage was reduced. Furthermore, within and around Leeds, the terrain precluded the even development of railway networks, and by far the most serious consequence of this was found in north Leeds, where no railway enters the city through a great arc from north-west to east, the very sector which contains all the traditional residential suburbs. Hilly terrain, and in particular, the great east-west scarp forming the southern side of Wharfedale eight miles to the north, forced the early rail link northward (1849) to take a circuitous north-westerly alignment, and since the much later Wetherby line (1876) also took an easterly course the 'good' suburbs of Leeds were never served by rail. To make matters worse, short-distance middle-class commuting was not likely to develop on other railways which approached the city, since they usually did so through the less attractive industrialised districts. The only exception was the Selby line which soon passed into open countryside to the rural station of Cross Gates where a rather lower-middle class community initiated a commuting tradition which persisted even after the area was engulfed by the local authority developments of the 1960s.
With regard to longer-distance rail commuting, nineteenth-century Leeds was rather more normal. The tendency of the upper middle-class to utilise the railway to enable them to live at considerable distance from the city is manifested in the late-Victorian stone villas and terraces of Menston, Burley, Ben Rhydding, Ilkley and Harrogate; the latter two had been seasonal resorts for Leeds folk, even in the stage-coach era, and this characteristic merely became full-time and permanent after the coming of the railway. However, unlike the trams, no cheap fare policy existed for the railways and this precluded the development of other middle-class commuter towns until competition from the motor buses after the 1920s stimulus a price war.
Ironically the initial impact of the bus within the city was probably less marked than elsewhere for tram services at reasonable fares were already established on a close network which the Corporation was happy to extend if necessary. Furthermore, the hilly terrain may have prevented the adoption of buses until the new technology had enabled capacities comparative to the trams to be carried up the steep hills of the northern suburbs. The early bus routes developed to serve most of the Corporation estates which were built behind or between the tramway radials. However, more significant from the standpoint of city growth were the routes which ran to rather insignificant rural termini, such as Cookridge and Alwoodley, and the new round-the-city routes. However, buses were not carrying the lion's share of the traffic until 1959 after which the trams were eliminated completely. The buses early function as tramway feeders was gradually superseded by a complete urban transport network in direct competition not only with the trams, but the railways as well.
Unlike the early tram networks, the first bus services were run by many small operators which initially encouraged fierce rivalry and so ensured frequent services and cheap fares. The Road Traffic Act, 1930, precipitated take-overs and amalgamations amongst the bus operators and the resultant bigger entities were rather better equipped than the smaller ones to reply to the railways new pricing policy. The large revenue generated on highly profitable routes was able to offset the cost of routes where competition with the railway was intense.
The new system of widespread and cheap public transport offered an opportunity for people to keep their job in the city but to move out and live in the country. On the more attractive side of Leeds, where the rail network was sparsest, miles of new bus-side land became available for development and 'semis' rapidly appeared in sporadic or ribbon fashion along many roads. A classic example of ribbon development around Leeds is found along the A65 to Burley-in-Wharfedale, based on trams to Guiseley (1909), trolley-buses thence to Burley (1915) and later buses all the way to Ilkley. The railwayless area along the Leeds-Otley road showed a rather tidier pattern with building at Weetwood, Adel, Bramhope and Old Pool Bank; so to did the Leeds-Wetherby road at Wellington Hill, Scarcroft, Bardsey and Collingham. In contrast the Harrogate road, which ran through land forming part of the Harewood Estate, remained almost completely undeveloped for miles beyond the city boundary.
There is therefore no simple key to understanding the distribution of commuter-development in and around Leeds. Existing settlement, land availability, transport availability and fare structures all affect the result but, in total, the new building implied a much increased and more complex linkage between Leeds and the area around it than had existed in 1920. Furthermore, since the 1970s the acceleration in private car ownership has progressively blurred any relationship between transport and the physical/social structure of Leeds that had developed previously. New private housing developments can be found in many locations across the city and beyond, including the relatively commuter-free belt to the north. The phenomenon of suburbanisation is slowly creeping into many dales villages as the private car has increased their accessibility to Leeds and Bradford. Were it not for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, the large scale suburbanisation of villages typical of the home counties of south-east England, would be largely uncontrollable. As yet, suburbanisation has been confined to the main trunk roads such as the A65 Kendal road and A61 Ripon road and adjacent villages which border the National Park.
A further comment may be made on the relationship between transport and suburban development around Leeds. It is very noticeable that in several of the new developments the earliest houses are of relatively small size and cheap construction compared with those added later, suggesting that one of the functions of the new transport services was that they allowed the less wealthy to emulate fashionable trends, provided they did so in areas which were as yet undeveloped and hence unaffected by fashionable land prices. Once established, however, the advantages of these new localities were soon more widely appreciated, and the formerly pioneer developments almost inevitably moved up the social scale. Tinshill, Lawnswood and Old Pool Bank all show early development (usually bungalows) of this cheaper sort now being surrounded by some very expensive housing.
Leeds in the Twentieth Century: Urban Renewal
The nineteenth century saw the establishment of Leeds primarily as a commercial city, built haphazardly and at a speed to keep pace with the ever expanding industries. Social and living conditions deteriorated rapidly, being sacrificed to promote the new industrial growth that brought great affluence to a few and indescribable poverty to many. For a long time the pleas for better living conditions by individuals such as Edward Baines, a journalist, and Robert Baker, a physician, went unheard. Cottage property with cellar dwellings was the most popular type of housing thrown up in this period, because it was cheap and because more houses per acre could be crammed together. Sanitation and general hygiene were often non-existent, shared privies being the norm; neither was there any proper drainage or piped water. There were terrible cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1848, and a bad attack of typhus in 1847. In 1834 34.9 per thousand were dying in Leeds, compared with a figure of 11.5 just a century earlier.
Despite the 1842 Leeds Improvement Act, inferior dwellings continued to be built. Cellar dwellings still existed until well into the twentieth century, a century which has tried valiantly to catch up with the removal of a back-log of slum property. Even so, back-to-back houses were still being built in the late 1930s.
As the town spread in the last century, there was a re-assessment of site values, and the main land-use zones, as they exist in essence today, began to take shape. The area covered by the late-eighteenth century town gradually emerged as a compact shopping and market area. Industry had started to concentrate in three main areas: heavy engineering predominated along the banks of the river and canal and near the railways, from Kirkstall in the west to Stourton in the east; in the Meanwood valley, tanneries, dyeworks and clothing factories developed; and heavy and light engineering sprang up in Hunslet and Holbeck with textile mills in Armley and Wortley. Finally, working class housing spread westwards through Burley and Kirkstall, eastwards into Sheepscar, Burmantofts, Meanwood, Harehills and along the York Road, and southwards into numerous areas of south Leeds. In contrast, better class residential areas tended to spread more on the higher ground to the north, for example in Headingley, Chapeltown and Roundhay. Later suburban development completed the encirclement of districts of old neighbouring villages.
Until the Town Planning Act of 1909 there was no official control over the siting of new houses. The result was that Leeds was left a legacy of many squalid housing areas interwoven with factories and warehouses. The back-to-backs were crowded some 80-90 per acre. The worst of these consisted only to two rooms, a living-cum-kitchen room and one bedroom; later types often had two rooms on each floor. Through ventilation was impossible. Before 1844 some 30 000 back-to-backs were built, 28 000 between 1844 and 1874 and another 12 000 by 1909. Within a radius of 21/2 miles from the centre of the city, there still remains extensive housing areas more than 100 years old.
The magnitude of the problem which faced the civic authorities after 1918 is apparent. The intensity of effort in clearing land has varied locally but much has been accomplished in re-housing population, in providing new sites for industry and in re-developing the central area in an effort to modernise its general character and to alleviate traffic congestion.
In the early inter-war period, there was an urgent need to provide for a general housing shortage, and council estates began to be developed in Meanwood, Middleton and elsewhere, just as in most large towns and cities. The replacement of extensive areas of crowded buildings had to wait, but between 1934 and 1939 a bold slum clearance scheme was set in motion and 30 000 of the poorest type of houses were scheduled for demolition. The clearance of a large area east of the markets, extending along York Road into Burmantofts, was begun and displaced householders rehoused in Middleton and Gipton. The scheme culminated in the building of Quarry Hill flats, a revolutionary high density scheme, on the cleared area. There, in blocks ranging from 4 to 8 storeys high, 938 dwellings, together with a shopping parade, communal laundry and other amenities, were built on 23 acres and 82% of the area was left as open space. Other schemes were started in Marsh Lane and also in Holbeck. However, due to the changed conditions after the war, most of the Holbeck site was re-zoned for industrial purposes.
It was estimated that in 1948 that Leeds still possessed 90 000 houses, out of a total of 154 000, which were substandard and fit only for demolition; the 90 000 included 56 000 back-to-backs. The problem of replacing this slum property was aggravated by the housing shortage and to meet the overwhelming demand, major building developments took place on cleared land near the city centre and in the outer ring. Council estates were sited at Spen Hill, Moor Grange, Armley Heights, Tinshill, Brackenwood and Cross Gates; and large-scale private building began in Cookridge, Adel, Alwoodley Park and Moortown. Extensions were also made to some earlier council estates such as Belle Isle and Seacroft, and many blocks of flats were added to increase the low density of some of those estates on the outskirts.
The most ambitious post-war housing development has taken place in the Seacroft area which, embracing the Seacroft, Swarcliffe and Whinmoor Estates, has now an estimated population of 90 000. It is practically a separate town with its own industrial estates; the Seacroft Town Centre, opened by HM the Queen in 1965, has an extensive pedestrian shopping centre and underground parking facilities.
Nearer the city centre, slum clearance has progressed and the land made available has been redeveloped in various ways. Later housing focused on individual designs and environmental improvements such as the estates of Ebor Gardens. The rate of slum clearance often outpaced the rate of redevelopment with the result that large tracts of wasteland, criss-crossed with paved streets, remained an eyesore for many years. Many such areas still exist in the southern Meanwood valley area, where derelict ramshackle industrial premises worsen the already bleak scene.
The urban revolution is not confined to rehousing the population. Leeds is very important industrially. Many old premises, especially the textile-mills in south-west Leeds, are still used but not always for their original purpose; in other areas, blocks of housing have been converted for small-scale manufacturing. In all too many cases the external appearance of many industrial premises is dirty and dilapidated and although internal modifications have enabled many buildings to function satisfactorily, they can only be described as industrial slums. Their clearance rate has been slow, although is now increasing as modern firms increasingly favour greenfield sites on the city outskirts, particularly close to the motorway network to the south. However, the civic authorities are reluctant to allow much of the open, often good, agricultural land to be swallowed up by light industry and much money has been spent on making more attractive the existing industrial areas, particularly along the Kirkstall Valley and in Hunslet and Holbeck. Where industrial development has been permitted in greenfield areas, industrialists have often been required to erect buildings of at least three storeys to prevent unnecessary expansion, a policy which often has not been easily accepted given the cheaper land values compared to inner city locations.
Leeds' central business district has also seen extensive redevelopment, although great care has been taken in preserving the ornate Victorian facades of the main thoroughfares of Briggate, Vicar Lane, Boar Lane and East Parade.
Twentieth century office needs of local government led to the opening of the Civic Hall in 1933; empty land behind, now used as a car park, remains available for further expansion. Near the Civic Hall are the multi-storey buildings of Leeds Metropolitan University (formerly Leeds Polytechnic) and the Brotherton Wing and Out-Patients Department of Leeds General Infirmary. To the north-west of this area lies one of the largest single comprehensive development sites in Leeds. It stretches as a wide arc from the Inner Ring Road underpass towards the southern end of Woodhouse Moor and embraces the rapidly expanding University of Leeds, including the Medical School and numerous departmental and residential accommodation, the General Infirmary, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Leisure complexes.
Leeds now possesses the finest shopping
centre in the region and every effort is being made to maintain
this superiority. In the inter-war years a few new stores,
several cinemas and the Queens Hotel, incorporating the entrance
to the City Station from City Square, made their appearance. The
most significant transformation began in 1924 with the
construction of the Headrow, by widening the Upper and Lower Head
Rows, to link Eastgate with Westgate and so create a new
east-west route through the centre of the city. Previously all
traffic in this direction had to pass through Boar Lane and City
Square, and in the early 1920s the congestion was already
becoming serious. The electric tramways began to be superseded by
buses and to meet their needs the Central Bus Station was built
on cleared land adjacent to Kirkgate Market.
The modern demand for more shops and office space has been met by building higher blocks and everywhere evidence of this new growth is apparent. The Merrion Centre was the first of the new shopping malls to open in the late 1960s, followed by the St Johns Centre and recently Victoria Court each one attempting to out-style its predecessor. Re-styling of the older Victorian arcades, pedestrianisation of some of the smaller central streets and the creation of a cosmopolitan atmosphere with street cafes and elaborate street architecture has been a recent phenomenon, but one which reflects Leeds' aims at ridding its tarnished image of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Central Leeds, like
other city centres, still has a big traffic problem despite the
construction of the inner and outer ring roads and the
introduction of one-way systems on Briggate, Vicar Lane and Park
Row. The M1 motorway terminus south of Leeds has been the focus
of a redevelopment scheme to ease traffic flow into the city
centre for several years. There has been a rapid expansion of the
bus network in Leeds and provision of combined bus/train
travelcards via the Metro system to encourage greater use of
public transport. Rapid transit schemes, including the
re-introduction of trams and/or trolley-buses, have been
considered and their success in other cities where they have been
introduced is awaited. Traffic entering Leeds via the main radial
routes at rush hour times now often stands gridlocked, making a
location in the central area undesirable for many firms. In order
to prevent further intrusion into the surrounding greenfield
area, improvements in the urban transport system are urgently
needed. It may be only a matter of time before the American
phenomenon of exploded cities such as Los Angeles and Detroit,
where traffic congestion and associated pollution of the central
area have led to rapid migration of people and jobs to the
'edge-cities' of the outer suburbs, becomes impossible to
contain.
Socio-Economic and Ethnic Segregation in Leeds
The development of public and private transport in Leeds since the turn of the century has caused a marked expansion of residential districts. Professional classes and others who could afford the fares of public transport and/or own cars moved progressively outwards towards the suburbs, particularly those on the northern perimeter. This resulted in the concentration of the working classes in the inner suburbs and inner city areas. The rapid expansion of local authority housing, particularly in the eastern districts of Leeds (Seacroft and Cross Gates), caused a further concentration of semi-skilled and manual workers in these areas. The net effect of these movements has been the emergence of city wards where the effects of social deprivation are clearly evident.
The worst effects of social deprivation are found in wards immediately to the south of Leeds city centre in the Hunslet/Holbeck districts; to the east of the centre in a broad sector running from Burmantofts, Harehills, Cross Gates and Seacroft; and westwards through Armley, Burley and Wortley. These areas are characterised by high crime rates (burglaries, drug addiction, car crime), high levels of unemployment, low standards of education, poor health and poor self-motivation. These are also areas with high concentrations of ethnic minorities. Understanding why these areas experience so many problems clearly lies in their development as areas of working class housing and predominantly industrial areas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the slow rate at which urban redevelopment schemes have progressed in replacing the virtually derelict housing stock.
The concentration of ethnic minorities in inner city wards is a common feature of most large industrial cities. Such concentrations are attributed to many factors, but principal among them are the desire to find cheap rented accommodation upon arrival in the host country, the inability to afford expensive public transport, the ready availability of low-paid manual jobs in the inner city and CBD (e.g. late-night office/shop/street cleaning) and the desire to live close to friends and relatives. Concentration tends to be strongest amongst the most recent immigrants, whereas dispersal and assimilation are trends amongst second and third generation immigrants who are increasingly mobile benefiting from good education, better work and career prospects and access to transport.
Ethnic concentrations in Leeds are particularly marked amongst West Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis; although it is the Scots and Irish who form the largest ethnic groups. This pattern reflects both the strong pull which Leeds had during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the early textile and engineering industries developed and provided opportunity to escape the poverty prevalent in rural parts of Scotland and Ireland and which has been maintained into the 1990s marked by a steady stream of new Irish and Scottish arrivals, and the shortage of manual workers which existed following the Second World War and which saw a tide of immigrants from outside the British Isles to fill the low-paid jobs which were becoming unpopular with British workers.
The greater social mobility of new Irish and especially Scottish immigrants thus allows their greater dispersal throughout the city, although the historical dependence of West Indians and other New Commonwealth immigrants on manual work has tended to cause concentration in wards where there is work. However, this tendency is broken by the Welsh who tend to form notable concentrations in the wealthier northern suburbs, e.g. Adel and Alwoodley. This, in part, may be attributed to the higher socio-economic status of the Welsh, in contrast to the Irish and Scots who may be coming from socially-deprived backgrounds. Nevertheless, the general pattern is for the outer suburbs, particularly the northern wards, to have higher proportions of immigrants from outside the Leeds region, whereas the outer suburbs of west and south Leeds (Pudsey, Morley and Rothwell) are favoured by Leeds folk. Explaining this pattern is not easy without drawing assumptions about socio-economic status and the quality of residential environments. It is conceivable that many factors are at work here including strong community identities which dissuade others from invading, the greater cosmopolitan atmosphere of the northern suburbs and the greater likelihood of meeting compatriots, and the predominance of higher education institutions, e.g. Leeds University, and their residential areas in the northern suburbs, e.g. Woodhouse, Headingley and Burley. Yet the bastions of Yorkshire life tend to be found in the southern districts including Elland Road, the hallowed turf of Leeds United Football Club!
The central wards of Leeds are shunned by all who have the means to move out to better residential environments. Despite the ambitious regeneration schemes, the central area, including the University ward, tends to have the worst in housing standards, conditions which are only tolerated in the short-term by students and in the longer term by ethnic minorities, particularly those from the Far East and East Africa. The plethora of Chinese and Malaysian take-aways and corner-shops in these central wards is testament to the entrepreneurial flair of the inhabitants and is nowhere more notable, apart from Bradford and Leicester. Other ethnic minorities have tended to concentrate in other wards and particularly notable are Chapeltown, a focus for Caribbean immigrants, Harehills, where Pakistanis far outnumber any other social group, and Headingley, where Indians are in significant numbers.
Studying trends in dispersal and concentration of ethnic groups may give an indication as to the growing economic status and mobility and cultural assimilation of immigrant groups. Since the census of 1961 there is little evidence for the increasing segregation of non-British ethnic groups as has been observed in the United States where ethnic ghettos are a characteristic feature of the larger cities such as Los Angeles and New York. If anything the concentration of New Commonwealth immigrants in Leeds has decreased, despite a slight rise in the concentration of Indians between 1961 and 1971. However, the patterns of social segregation have remained broadly similar, although a sharper separation between West Indians and Irish groups has emerged. Indeed it is the increasing social segregation of the Irish and the formation of a distinctive Irish community in Leeds which is the most significant ethnic development and one which is mirrored in other cities with similarly high numbers of Irish nationals, e.g. Manchester and Liverpool. This segregation is by no means recent and his its roots in the immigrant waves of the eighteenth century.
By 1851, Irish-born people, made up 7.2% of the population of Scotland and 2.9% in England and Wales. Practically every county and urban area had an Irish element in its population. A marked increase in Irish emigration occurred during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, occasioned by the rapid increase in employment opportunities in Leeds, and by the failure of the Irish economy to keep pace with a rapidly rising Irish population. Yet even from the earliest days of Irish immigration, this particular ethnic group has remained staunchly segregated and stem from a response to an historically hostile environment.
Popular attitudes towards the Irish migrant stem from the campaigns of the mid-nineteenth century to improve the living and working conditions of the working classes and to be rid of the notorious cholera and typhus epidemics. James Kay, a Manchester doctor, published a pamphlet intended to rouse local and national authorities to improve the conditions of the urban working class in order to prevent an upsurge of social and political anarchy. However, the paper unfortunately lacked definite proposals and concentrating on the existing problems with vivid descriptions of the Irish and their living conditions, helped to broadcast a stereotypical image of the Irish: they were to be always to be found crowded into densely populated, distinctively Irish quarters characterised by poverty, poor housing, crime and drunkenness.
However, such concentrations had became the norm largely through changes in employment structure from predominantly textile manufacture to engineering rather than through the public perception of inadequacy and fecklessness on the part of the Irish: later migrants tended to lack the skills necessary for the more sophisticated jobs in engineering following the demise of the mills and they tended to gravitate towards employment where only sheer physical strength and stamina were needed, chiefly in poorly paid labouring jobs, and where housing was cheapest. This, together with the growing tide of anti-Catholic xenophobia, forced an Irish response of residential segregation. The cultural shock and dislocation which many Irish immigrants faced in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Leeds would have been profound and ranged from poor public perception to language barriers.
A detailed account of the nature of Irish segregation in Manchester has recently been published by Busteed and Hodgson (Geographical Journal, July 1996) and the following points emerge which can undoubtedly be applied to Leeds, given that the two cities are virtually synchronous in the development of their urban geographies. A notable feature was the residential clustering of Irish migrants in the nineteenth century. This provided a basis for various forms of mutual support, especially in the initial phases of the migration process. Clustering also enabled the rapid mobilisation of community resources in the face of external threat, e.g. in response to police or other provocation. Furthermore, clustering in the form of multiple occupancy was one way to reduce rent, and ethnic compatability an obvious criterion in the selection of tenants and accommodation.
The Catholic Church in both Manchester and Leeds would have had a significant role in sustaining Irish communal life. Originally, the Catholic population would have worshipped in private houses, but by the beginning the nineteenth century small Catholic churches had been founded in the main Irish districts and their establishment served to reinforce these communities. Such was the strength of Catholic support in Leeds, that Leeds is now the seat of a Roman Catholic diocese marked by the fine cathedral church of St Ann in Cookridge Street.
Finally, the marked tendency towards drunkenness and violence, even between immigrants from different parts of Ireland was notable in Manchester. Between 1845 and 1854, 47.7% of all cases of creating a breach of the peace while sober; 31.8% of cases of drunkenness, 42.8% of all cases of illicit distillation and 29.4% of all murders were attributed to the Irish. Similar figures for Leeds are not available, yet given that notices such as "No swaddy Irishmen or soldiers wanted here" appeared in many Leeds drinking establishments, violence was undoubtedly equally prevalent on the other side of the Pennines.
The perturbation of Irish segregation into the twentieth century given the disappearance of traditional antagonisms is difficult to interpret. It is true that the Protestant Irish have and continue to be capable of greater assimilation than the Catholics and this may be a reflection of renewed hostilities which stem from The Troubles of the past 25 years. Clearly, the deep-seated and unwarranted antagonism between Leeds folk and their Irish visitors has been one which has been difficult to eliminate. Research into the reasons behind this is needed, although unlikely to be undertaken given the current political sensitivities.
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Acknowledgements
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