Beckett Park in the past
Beckett Park was originally part of the lands of New Grange, a farm established by Kirkstall Abbey in the middle ages, to manage its estates in Headingley. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the land around New Grange was acquired by the Wade family, who rebuilt the farm, and made the fields to the south into a park, looking over the Aire valley, except for half-a-dozen or so fields to the east, worked from Grange Farm. In 1832, the estate was bought by the Becketts, who renamed the house Kirkstall Grange. The park was surrounded by woodland, including Ox Moor Wood to the east (renamed Church Wood, after the building of the church, 1868), Batcliffe Wood to the south, and Low Wood to the south-west; Queen’s Wood to the west was named after the Victoria Memorial was erected there, 1858. The Becketts sold the land to Leeds in 1908, for development as a training college, opened in 1913, and the parkland to the south became Beckett Park. Between the Wars, the fields and farm (now Parkside Farm) to the east were progressively developed as the Beckett’s Park estate, apart from the southernmost field, which became allotments. Then after the Second World War, Queenswood Drive was laid along the western edge, and the Foxcroft estate and a school covered Low Wood and the western half of the Park.
Photographs by kind permission of Leeds Library & Information Service and the Thoresby Society. Photographs are subject to copyright and should not be reproduced without the owner's permission.
See also, photographs of Beckett Park now.
For historic photos of other parks, go to Parks in the Past.
