A quick rearrangement of the planned schedule due to the prospect of reasonable weather had us motoring north again to Leeds. Goodness, it’s a busy city.

We drove up the motorway again and into the east side of the city, to make our way to the Thackray Medical Museum, just next to Leeds’ famous St. James Infirmary. Parking at the museum was billed as “Pay and Display at the front of the building”, but there wasn’t a single space to be had in that area. If you’ve ever tried to park in or close to any major hospital in the UK, you’ll know that the staff and visitors to the hospital get there very early.

Parkopedia showed some car parks nearby, so we scuttled off, only to find that the supposedly free car park nearby was in fact a Morrison’s grocery store. We didn’t want to get a ticket for parking there more than two hours and pretending we were shoppers, so the good Mrs. M. downloaded the Euro Car Parks app, went through the process of buying an electronic ticket that allowed us legal parking there, but kept getting bounced back with an error. So much for that.

We motored back to St. James’ Infirmary and found its mega-sized multi-storey car park, and even found a space on the road level. That enabled us to walk through the hospital campus, around and through the loading bays, and back to the museum, which was just fine and dandy.

The museum itself was really good. Housed in what had been a workhouse, then part of the hospital, it’s aimed at younger people and takes you through medical care throughout the years. There was a part called Disease Street, where they’ve tried to recreate what nineteenth century Leeds was like, with the horrible housing, overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and back breaking work for all. Given we were in Leeds to look at where some of my ancestors came from, and they were from poor stock, it was an apposite exhibition.

Further around and we were able to chat with one of the volunteer guides, a former Anesthetist, who gave us a mini-talk about the dreaded Iron Lung, used for Polio sufferers in the fifties. That, and a few other things in the museum, should give people thought about vaccination. Who has Polio these days? Hardly anybody. Why? Because of vaccination. The museum guide summed it up when she said that people had responsibility for more than just themselves when considering vaccination.

Being a weekday, there were parties of school students moving around the museum. Noisy, for sure, but I think they were enjoying it.

After the museum, we stepped across the road and into the Beckett Street Cemetery, one of the large burial grounds built in Leeds as the population boomed (and died) during the nineteenth century. Our reason for visiting was to find the grave markers for a handful of my ancestors who lie there. On entering the cemetery, we were confronted with thousands of Victorian grave monuments, all blackened from years of soot, and looking fabulous in the bright autumn sunshine. The people that run the cemetery (handed over from Leeds Corporation), have a great guidebook and there is a trail to follow to find the local worthies. It’s a big place and obviously takes a lot of work just to keep it from becoming totally wild, but it was clear enough for us to find the grave markers we wanted to find. If you’re ever in Leeds, it’s a great place just for stroll.

Following that cemetery, we made our way to the University District to find St. George’s Field, the former Leeds General Cemetery, where at least twenty of my ancestors lie. Getting there was an issue, though. There are more cars than there are available parking spaces in Leeds, so every single available space is already taken. Cutting a long story short, I did find a place to park eventually, quite by accident and it was restriction-free. But, unless you have a Leeds city parking permit, you’re generally stuffed. Also, we were both taken aback at the number of university students walking about. Yes, it’s the university district, but the streets were full of young people making their way to and from the campus, and seemingly it’s a permanent state in term time. I guess it’s because most of the university buildings, and its students, are concentrated in a small area.

The cemetery has long since been closed, and all but a few of the grave markers have been cleared away, leaving a beautiful walled park area within the university campus. The main gate, still imposing, remains, as does the chapel in the centre. Many of the City’s poor were buried here, often ten or more to a burial plot, and some of those plain, City-provided grave markers have been laid down as pathways. We spent a fruitless half hour searching for Maynes but didn’t find any. There can only have been a fraction of the original markers used, given the tens of thousands buried there. Still, it was reasonable work on rapidly darkening autumn afternoon.

I was very pleased to have stood where the ground was full of the remains of Maynes, and families associated with Maynes, including the Linskills, the Longbottoms and the Pickersgills.

After the cemetery, we repaired to the old Public Lending Library, which fortunately had been converted into a pub. A pub for students. Boy, did we raise the average age when we walked in. We did have a chat with a first year student called Coren, from Wales, who was studying Civil Engineering in Leeds. He was such a nice young fellow, and his mother should be proud of him.

After a long day, we motored back to Holmfirth (disobeying the lady in the Navi system), and basically crashed out, although not without a couple of hours on BBC iPlayer first.  There was something we had to do though, but that comes in the next post.