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The Rev Dr Peter Mullen* is a priest of the Church
of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
in the City of London. Mullen is Chaplain to the Honourable Company of Air Pilots,
one of the Livery Companies of the City of London and the Anglican Chaplain to
the London Stock Exchange, a largely honorific and historical post. He
has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal.
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| In this article written
for the Northern echo he gives his impression of Leeds after a visit in 2005.
Somewhat surprisingly, given that he held the post of Chaplain to the London Stock
Exchange, he takes exception to the modern buildings and commercial consumerism
he saw in Leeds city center. |
'Love
is not love which alters when it alteration finds" - so why am I so out of
sorts with Leeds? I was born and brought up there.
It is the glorious mythical
place of my childhood and misspent youth. There was the jail opposite my grandad's
newsagents' shop, its turrets like a medieval castle. The magnificent gas works
and the rattling trains at Copley Hill goods yard. Over the sooty suburb, St Bartholomew's
19th century gothic church loomed like a Victorian grandparent. Armley Park with
its vast scope for cricket and football. West Leeds High School from which I was
a consistent truant.
Later there was the City Varieties - before it sold its
cheeky soul to television - where dancing girls took their clothes off and comedians
had the house rolling and shaking with mucky local jokes. And the Majestic ballroom
- really a Saturday night dance hall with waltzes and foxtrots, quicksteps and,
in the time of our burgeoning modernity, the twist and the cha cha. Also the Tatler
cinema where they showed foreign films. I had a lovely assignation there with
a girl existentialist who called herself "Ponytail" - all eye-shadow
and French cigarettes.
Recently, I've been having to go up to Leeds again
to visit my mother who's in Leeds General Infirmary. I could have died for sheer
sorrow. What a dump it is now! A glossy, well-off dump that thinks well of itself
of course - the worst sort of dump. |
| You
come out of the station and into City Square with its statues of the Black Prince
surrounded by topless nymphs. Horror of horrors and the death of good taste. The
lovely Victorian post office is now dwarfed by a nasty white cylinder of a building
and the old Mill Hill Unitarian Chapel - that always used to be half full of agreeable
half believers - now has blue writing round the roof saying SANCTUARY FOR ALL.
I'd have liked to climb up and add: "What, even Osama bin Liner?". You
walk towards the glorious parish church - where the one consolation is that the
architecture is unspoiled and the music as wonderful as ever under the mastership
of Dr Simon Lindley. But that walk along Boar Lane - where MacFisheries used to
have their wet fish stall and past the market where you could get Granelli's ice
cream. It made me want to chuck myself in the river Aire for sheer misery.
Pedestrianised wealthy slob shopping. So called "music shops" where
audible filth breaks forth over the discarded fast food wrappers. The yobs lurching
along in their baseball caps. The inner city poor in their designer trainers.
I thought: "All it needs is the barbed wire and it'd be the landscape of
totalitarian consumerism". Which is what it is anyway.
I apologise. No
doubt the Leeds lads and lasses are as spirited as ever. The football team is
vile and sorry for itself as it always was. But Leeds Rhinos are a credit to northern
manliness. I wish the City Varieties was still open - instead of the creepy forensic
perversion of the sex shops. And that the Yates Wine Lodge were still a proper
boozer with sawdust and moderate intimidation of underage drinkers. O
time! O manners! That Leeds should come to this! |
Recent view
of City Square with statues of the Black Prince and one of his Nymphs. In the
backgound is the cylindrical white tower, which dwarfs the old GPO building ,and
Mill Hill chapel mentioned in the article. A few more modern "carbuncles"
have been constructed since 2005- They call it progress! [Ed] |