Woodhouse

The road widening threat to Woodhouse Moor is back, and it’s called NGT

NGT trailerLast Thursday, the 18th June, Leeds City Council and Metro unveiled their plans for New Generation Transport (NGT), a scheme that would see trolleybuses running in leeds for the first time since 1928.  The plan is to have three routes; the East Route, the South Route, and the North Route, with the trolleybuses running along dedicated bus lanes wherever possible

The North Route would run along the line of the A660.  Because there’s no plan to knock down any of the buildings opposite the university, this would create a bottleneck at the junction of the A660 and Clarendon Road. To cope with this bottleneck, traffic would be stacked on Woodhouse Moor.  This would be done either by widening the existing road between Rampart Road and Clarendon Road, or by building a new road across Monument moor.  The second option exists because the Highways Department are aware of local sensitivity about losing the avenue of trees.

The stated aim of the scheme is to create an improved public transport system using dedicated bus lanes wherever possible. But if that’s the aim, then it could be achieved by creating dedicated bus lanes within the existing highway.

This scheme would affect Woodhouse Moor in an almost identical manner to the scheme proposed by Highways at the end of last year. At that time, we were told that the road widening was necessary to facilitate a pedestrian crossing on Clarendon Road.

A new website has been set up to keep people informed about this latest threat to our area – New Generation Transport

A History of Woodhouse

Temperance HallWoodhouse is a fantastic place, possibly the most historic and interesting place in the city. Not many people know this, but all of the area now covered by what we now know as Hyde Park and Woodhouse ward, was originally known as Woodhouse.  It included all of the university precinct, Little London, Hyde Park, North Hyde Park, Little Woodhouse, and Woodhouse.  You can see that Woodhouse Moor got its name because it was centrally placed within Woodhouse. We no longer know all of the original boundary of Woodhouse, but we do know that part of its boundary with Headingley ran along Cliff Lane in what we now call North Hyde Park.

Neil Hudson, the author of the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Yorkshire Diary column has published a short history of Woodhouse entitled “Never a dull moment . . “ It’s a fascinating story in which Woodhouse Moor consistently plays a major part – just as it does today.

The above photograph shows Temperance Hall, also known as Woodhouse Mechanics Institute. The local Temperance Movement was one of the groups that in the early 1850s pressed for Leeds Town Council to purchase Woodhouse Moor.