Scrum management

The historical development of Middleton is relevant to our understanding of young people s contemporary interpretations of ‘community’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ because it goes some way in explaining how Middleton has developed as a place. It is also crucial in exploring the effects of these historical events in shaping local identities, a sense of ‘community and wider notions of belonging. The recent history of Middleton begins with Charles Brandling I, proprietor of the Middleton Park estate (1749-1802), who was responsible for the early development o f commercial coal mining in Middleton. Coal was transported to the nearby town o f Leeds along the Middleton Railway (1758) and in 1811, John Blenkinsop, the manager of Middleton Colliery, joined forces with a local engineer, Matthew Murray, to produce a locomotive for the colliery (Middleton Railway Trust 1993). Middleton s location on the coal seams meant that it also became an important site for the smelting and casting o f iron. Coal was mined in Middleton until 1968 when the last coal was taken from Middleton Broom colliery.

The coal-mining legacy still survives, for example, in the micro-identities of housing areas, such as the Brooms, the naming o f the Blenkinsop playing fields and in the landscape features present in Middleton Park:

With the closure o f Middleton Colliery in 1968 only the spoil heaps and Bell Pits remain to remind us o f the close connection with coal this parish enjoyed for so many centuries.

(filing 1971:23)

The Cinder Path, once known as ‘the drift,’ perhaps a reference to a nearby pit, continues to be an important local thoroughfare running from Thorpe Lane to Town Street. Although it originally ran alongside Cinder Hill and the nearby Cinder fields, today its course adjoined the

Middleton housing estate bordering the Lingwells and the Acres before crossing to the nearby village o f Thorpe on the Hill.

Middleton changed very little until the 1919 Addison Housing Act, which coincided with Middleton’s incorporation into the City o f Leeds. The Act required local authorities to survey housing needs and submit plans to meet them. By 1922, an initial phase of council housing development was completed. This was in contrast to earlier developments that had clustered around the important focal points o f St Mary’s Church and the social centre of Town Street. The Middleton Park Arms and Middleton Park Circus soon followed and since their construction, they have, to this day, remained virtually unchanged (Doherty 1987). Middleton Circus has continued to be the central hub o f Middleton providing an important meeting point for young people and adults. The pace o f growth increased during the 1930s and a sizeable part of the Middleton estate was built to accommodate inward migrants from the nearby slums of Holbeck and Hunslet:

Hundreds o f families were re-housed in the outer suburbs. Many of the families experienced poverty, as unemployment is known to have been high during the decade.

(Hopley 1989: 13)

The death of the owner of the Middleton Park estate in 1933 ‘brought... [this] era to an end in Middleton which had been dominated until then by one or other o f the ‘great families’ (Illing 1971: 3). The following quotation by Illing (1971: 3) demonstrates how the expansion o f the Middleton estate hastened this process:

The gradual development o f the old village area with private housing ensured the end o f a type o f feudalism to which some older residents look back with nostalgia, and others with bitterness - the truth o f the matter probably lies midway between these two positions.

The Middleton housing estate continued to expand with the construction o f low-rise council housing. Although the development o f the estate has totally re-created the landscape, some o f the historical references to place such as Sissons Farm, New and Far Intake and Sharp House have been retained (Doherty 1987). Each o f these, for example, is found in street names within the estate. In summary, the main outcome o f these pre-Second World War housing developments was the creation of visible status divisions between the ‘old’ village inhabitants and the ‘new’ Middleton residents, who were tenants on the City Council’s housing estate.

Existing identities of both the ‘old’ and the ‘new ’ have, over time, gradually yet continually been formed and re-formed to shape personal and social identities within Middleton today.

The development of Middleton was not unhindered and, in 1979, 136 homes in 34 blocks of three-bedroomed council flats, built between 1932 and 1935, were demolished as a result of structural faults:

There are many three-bedroomed flats on the Middleton estate which are unpopular with tenants and very difficult to let. In the circumstances demolition, followed by a re-building scheme seems appropriate.

(Yorkshire Evening Post 30th July 1979: 1)

Concerns surrounding demolition, ‘difficult to let’ properties and housing voids continued through until the 1980s when many ‘duo slab’ concrete homes throughout Leeds faced demolition. The majority of the ‘doomed’ properties were situated on what the local media, when referring to their demography, labelled ‘white estates’. Problems were far from resolved following the demolition of properties in Acre Square and Lingwell Grove as the physical appearance of a locality already experiencing neglect was degraded further. Vast empty spaces and boarded-up properties added to this rundown image and were recognised as being a target for vandals. As a former resident observed and the Yorkshire Evening Post commented:

Returning in 1981,1 was horrified by the changes. Everything looked shabby and neglected, especially on the estates...

(Hopley 1989: 13) Life really should have been good in Middleton, untainted down the years by the smoke from mill chimneys, and once a semi-rural refuge for people rehoused from the slums o f Hunslet and Holbeck. Today, in spite of the way it has grown in the past 70 years, Middleton remains a suburb without a corporate identity - a strange mixture o f old and new housing, prideful home owners and neglectful tenants.

(Yorkshire Evening Post 17th March 1989: 8)

If anything, such divisions were symbolic o f the subtle spatial tensions that existed within this locality.

In everyday geographies, derelict landscapes resulting from the demolition o f housing voids impact heavily on ‘community’ and environmental aspirations. In 1989, a local councillor described ‘the blight’ that has turned a once prosperous area into ‘a wilderness of boarded up homes’, and said:

It is extremely important from a community and environmental point of view for these two areas [Lingwell Road and Acre Square] to be redeveloped with housing. We want to see Middleton as an area where people are happy to live and bring up their families. It does nothing for the social fabric o f the area to have the derelict sites we have now, especially when Middleton has so much to offer.

(Yorkshire Evening Post 17th March 1989: 8)

In 1991, Middleton comprised 6285 individual dwellings, of which 57% were local authority homes. This was more than double the average level of council housing in Leeds as a whole (27%). The highest level of owner occupancy was in the area north of the Ring Road around Town Street and the ‘old village’ (78%) and the lowest was in the area surrounding Thorpe Road and adjoining Middleton Park Avenue (24%). Terraced homes constituted the largest proportion of dwellings (42%) and were concentrated in the area adjacent to Thorpe Road and Middleton Park Avenue, where council renting, especially of terraced properties, was the dominant tenure (Middleton Profile Group 1995). By 1997 (Yorkshire Evening Post 2 July 1997: 6) the provision of housing by Leeds Federated Housing Association had reduced some of the marked contrasts between private ownership and local authority tenures. By 1999 however, data collated by Leeds City Council presented evidence of a decrease in the number of households and recorded 5169 households on the Middleton estate. This figure equated to 59/o of all households in the Middleton ward (8719) and 2% of all households in the city (Leeds Youth Offending Team, no date, a). In 1999, Leeds City Council owned 48% of the housing stock on the Middleton housing estate, while 6% belonged to housing associations.

Middleton Park, known locally as ‘Miggy Park’, was originally part o f the rural estate of the local gentry, but today is reflective of the recent dereliction o f city parks (Winkley 2001). The park was managed by Leeds City Council and was a relic of both the open countryside and former colliery workings that used to characterise Middleton. The plight of the park came to the attention o f Leeds’ residents over a decade ago when the Yorkshire Evening Post (10 September 1991: 6), noted that the park had become a dumping ground for car thieves and joy­

riders. Anecdotes of glue sniffers, arson attacks as well as the destruction of public amenities compounded images o f destruction. Examples such as these were constructed by the media as being symbolic of perceptions o f urban decay and the so-called loss o f civic pride.