There are fifty photo galleries on the HeadingleyLeeds website, and one of these focusses on Ginnels Around Headingley. The gallery features photos of all the ginnels, an outline of their overall history, details of the development of each – and several poems by Lucy Newlyn.
Many of the ginnels are in fact ‘fossils’ of ancient rural footpaths, which have been walled-in as Headingley developed as a suburb. And the gallery includes a guide to a walk along the oldest and longest of these, from one end of Headingley to the other. For the past few years, Richard Tyler on behalf of Headingley Development Trust has offered this walk as one of the events of the annual Heritage Open Days, held in one week in September. Now this walk is also the subject of a new book published by HDT.
The booklet on The Great Ginnel in Headingley comprises forty pages with forty illustrations, including maps and contemporary and historic photos. The book provides a guide to a walk in the footsteps of previous generations, through some of the old features of Headingley. The walk begins at Hyde Park and follows the old path through a series of ginnels over Headingley Hill. It passes a former orphanage, runs through a ginnel which is a Listed Building, and then descends onto Woodhouse Ridge – where an original un-made section of the path survives.
The path runs parallel with Meanwood Beck, the location of a series of old mills, presaging the Industrial Revolution in Headingley. The path follows the remains of the groundworks for these mills, and in due course, arrives at the site of the very oldest, Wood Mill, built in the twelfth century. The mill has been rebuilt more than once since, and its latest incarnation is now occupied by Tannery Park in Meanwood.
The walk continues, following a path from Wood Mill to Weetwood Hall, the oldest building around Headingley. The path passes The Hollies, and then enters the longest ginnel in Headingley, 250 yards, from Weetwood Lane to Oxley Residence. The final stretch to Weetwood Hall is now overlain by Leeds University’s Sports Park Weetwood.
The book is available at HEART.
Richard Tyler
author, The Great Ginnel in Headingley
editor, headingleyleeds.com
