3-053-399 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Old Bridge at Leeds, 1873. Old Leeds Bridge '... was a stone structure of five arches, and built so far back as 1327, but was twice widened, first in 1730, and again in 1755. In an Act of Parliament passed in that year it was recited that Leeds was "a place of great trade and large extent," and "was inhabited by great numbers of tradesmen, manufacturers, artificers, and others."...Upon the old bridge was held for a great length of time what Thoresby speaks of as "the memorable cloth market, the very life of these parts of England." The whole of the cloth market business was done on the battlements of the bridge, and on stools or forms under it, on which the clothmakers used to deposit their cloth and expose it for sale. In course of time this arrangement was found to impede the increasing traffic, and the market was removed to Briggate in 1648...The "Leeds Improvement Act'' was obtained by the Corporation in 1869, and in the preamble it was stated that "it had been found that, from the increased and increasing traffic over the bridge, it is entirely inadequate for its present purposes; it is expedient, therefore, that the present bridge should be removed, and a new bridge should be constructed at or near the site thereof".' From "Illustrated London News", 1873.