ARCADES PROJECT

The Grand Arcade in Leeds is about five minutes walk from the other arcades in Leeds, but it pre-dates most of them and still has the original clock from 1898, though the imperial characters who used to mark every hour by marching across the front no longer move, even though the clock does still tell the time.

It’s a simple arcade sloping down from New Briggate, near the impressive Grand Theatre, down to Vicar Lane. Its glass ceiling gives it a bright feel and there are quite a few original features to look out for, in addition to the clock (which wasn’t strictly speaking ‘original’ as it came in a year or so after the arcade opened in 1897).

Some of the shops in the arcade today give a nice sense of continuity to its past: there is a vintage tea room today, though not on the same site as the original arcade tea room; the old tailor’s still has Singer sewing machines out in the arcade, though mostly used for the gin bar which occupies the space in the evenings – the bespoke tailor ‘The Perfect Measure’ still operates by day, though, so this premises maintains its function from decades back. The camera shop is fairly recent, but there was a camera shop in the arcade 100 years ago, providing one of the fascinating stories from the arcade’s past (see below).

There is a line of lamps hanging down from the wooden framed archway of the glass roof (though I wonder if this was ever in ironwork). And I loved the decorative tiled entrance with the Numbers 5 and 11 in those shop fronts still today.  A lot of the windows above the main shop fronts look original, with their small panes divided by what might even still be lead linings.

There are some classic arcade mainstays like a trendy barbershop, and a very good coffee served in the home décor store, but also some unique shops like the Italian pasta shop, where you can watch them preparing the pasta from the arcade walkway if you time your visit right.

The clock now just has the two knights and the cockerel visible, as well as the quote from Chaucer: “Time and tide wait for no man.” When originally installed, the clock was placed at the angle where the arcade’s side-arm heads off towards where the cinema used to be. Go out to the entrance here – on Merrion Street – and see the ghost signage for the old Tower Cinema still visible all along the brick wall of the building today.

There are a couple of shops vacant in the Grand Arcade (May 2024) but I like this place: I like its edgy feel with trendy coffee and barber, gin bar and pasta, along with its vintage touches like the tea room and tailor.

My pick of the arcade’s past

In December 1898 the clock by Potts of Leeds arrived, with its seven characters: a Canadian, a Hindu, a Highlander, an Irishman, a British soldier and two knights, all making a bow on the hour, and with a cockerel crowing at the end of their parade. One newspaper compared it to something similar in Strasbourg Cathedral.

One shopkeeper got into trouble in 1904 after taking up shops in the Grand Arcade, and failing with each of them. A former bricklayer, Henry Clarke was a clerk for the arcade company before setting up shop in the arcade selling first as a tobacconist who also stocked glass and china, then toys, and finally an agent for a billiard table manufacturer. He also borrowed off the arcade company before ending up with unpayable debts of over £1500 (almost £250,000 in today’s money).

When a local Catholic church had a clear-out in 1904, one trader in the Grand Arcade got lucky, picking up two paintings for a few shillings, when they were eventually assessed as being original works by Reubens and Vandyck, worth thousands of pounds even then (and more like half a million today). The lucky man agreed to give a quarter of the profit to the Catholic Church as a goodwill gesture.

A photographer’s assistant who had worked in a shop in the Grand Arcade for several years made the news when they collapsed and had a stroke in the street outside the arcade. Ferdinand Hansen, according to press reports at the time, had spent 30 years ‘masquerading as a man,’ though on further examination in the local hospital it was found that he had been born ‘Dora Hansen.’ The notion of transgender didn’t exist in 1919, when the accident happened, far less in 1889, when Hansen apparently began living as a man. Strangely, the story was reported in far more depth in the Australian newspapers, there never being any mention of the Grand Arcade in UK newspaper coverage of the story. The sad follow-up to the story was that Hansen died a year later in the workhouse infirmary.

In 1926, Italians in Leeds formed a branch of the National Fascist movement, with one of its organisers being a Mr Ghiloni, who ran the Italian art supply shop in Grand Arcade. Initially only 30-40 Italians joined, but Mr Ghiloni said to a local paper: “Many of the desirable people are inclined to hang back, thinking that their action in joining might be misconstrued…”

Sources for the above stories all from either www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk or the National Library of Australia Trove database, and specifically: 1) Blackburn Standard, 24 December 1898; 2) Yorkshire Evening Post, 12 April 1904 – British Library Board; 3) Yorkshire Evening Post, 5 October 1904 – British Library Board; 4) trove.nla.gov.au 5) Leeds Mercury, 9 November 1926 – National World Publishing Ltd.

What memories do you have of visits in years gone by?

Have you got any good stories to add on the past of this arcade?

What’s your favourite shop in the arcade today?

Have you seen this arcade in any films or books?

My favourite shops in the arcade

Tough call between the Sonder home décor and coffee shop, which extends under several shop units in the basement, and the tea room, though the camera shop is also a treasure trove, and the Italian pasta makers are a joy to watch.

Is there a website for this arcade?

No website for the arcade as such; the Facebook page is live but not updated for a few months. Several of the businesses in the arcade have social media pages.