While I have visited Yorkshire reasonably frequently in the past, there is one patch with which I was unfamiliar. The Leeds sub-region is south and a little west of York, where a significant branch line bifurcates at Doncaster and goes through Wakefield, whilst a suburban line from Leeds passes through Harrogate and returns to York. If you start from far enough north, it is unnecessary to travel via London, unlike other towns and cities.
By some chance, my accommodation was only about two minutes walk from Headingley Stadium, both of them in fact. The city’s undoubted main attraction is the Royal Armouries, in Leeds Dock, only open since 1996 and ironically with a foundation stone laid by the Duke of Kent, which county purloined the city’s name for a castle. It is effectively an overspill for the Tower of London, containing centuries of armour and weapons, like these handguns, for which there is no space, in a strategic city by the motorway and Pennines two hundred miles north, which may also thwart any modern day Colonel Blood. Just across the Aire from the city centre, the Armouries is arranged on five or six stories, with a main restaurant on the ground floor and a coffee shop higher up. There are other cafes outside the complex and you can watch the Docks in action.
A few miles to the north and not far south of Harrogate, lies Harewood House. It was built in the mid-1700s for the Lascelles family who became Earls of Harewood soon afterwards, descended from the Lumleys who included a daughter of Edward IV. The sixth Earl married Mary, daughter of George V and made Princess Royal, whilst the eighth Earl now resides here, being Charles III’s second cousin. It can be said to define Yorkshire in the way that Chatsworth and Powderham define their counties. Built on the site of Gawthorp House, it is truly majestic. The gates are on the main road and so is the bus stop, although a fifteen minute walk to the house, full of great artefacts. Catering facilities include a Terrace cafe, with a view of one particular garden, redolent of Versailles.
So, whilst both of these major attractions are much newer than elsewhere in and beyond Yorkshire, they have connections to significant older history. Claire Cross’s iconic biography of Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, mentions that he found Leeds to be more welcoming of the Reformation than the rest of the county.
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