Michael Edwards discovers why the vibrant city of Leeds is making its mark as one of the UK’s top spots for a city break.
Leeds is my kind of town as Frank Sinatra almost sang. Blasting away the soot and polishing its industrial heritage, Leeds, with its galleries, museums, independent shops and entertainment makes for a fascinating short break. A city that’s buzzing with regeneration yet still honouring its historic past; blending past, present and future.
Forget yesteryear’s flat caps, flat vowels and Coronation Street style backstreets where characters supposedly deliver Alan Bennet monologues. Leeds is putting the cliches of the professional northerner to bed and focussing on a present that sees cranes soaring skyward as the city builds towards a prosperous future as a northern powerhouse. Though at the heart of Yorkshire’s famed Rhubarb Triangle you’ll still find sticks flourishing on the allotments, pigeons homing and whippets run in the parks.
Perhaps the best way to start is with a walk along the canal from the railway station towards the Royal Armouries Museum to savour Leeds’s renaissance. You don’t have to be an industrial archaeologist to appreciate that these warehouses and wharves were once busy with coal merchants, farriers, stone masons and grease-makers. Nowadays, the red-brick buildings have been reincarnated as apartments, cafes, cocktail bars and restaurants.
At Brewery Wharf a hoppy aroma is a reminder that beer once fuelled the workers. Filling many a keg and foaming tankard, Tetley was the major brewer and you can detour to view the 1930s art deco grandeur of their headquarters, now finding a new purpose in life amongst the arts.
Alternatively, you can go Venetian and take one of the two yellow taxis, called Twee and Drie, running every 15 minutes from Granary Wharf, which gives the advantage of the Captain’s wise commentary. If you take a water taxi, stroll back a few hundred yards to take in the canal side walk that celebrates some of Leeds’s remarkable heroes: Leonara Cohen who had been both an early century Suffragette then a 1970s feminist, saxophonist and bandleader Ivy Benson who fought for equal pay for female musicians, plus Charles Turner Thackray who investigated the diseases of the Industrial Revolution.
From the city centre, buses travel to the Thackray Museum of Medicine for insights into an era of cholera, scarlet fever and tuberculosis. Average life expectancy was in the 40s for the working classes and even lower for those in the workhouses. Although the museum shows the agonising realities of primitive surgery in Victorian times it also pays tribute to the myriads of subsequent medical advances.
Free admission to the Royal Armouries Museum gives access to millennia of warfare with demonstrations, films and talks throughout the day. Designed to look like the raw interior of a battle-ready castle, the austere walls tower above displays that include Henry VIII’s suit of armour. Amongst the weapons there is many a quotation, none more chilling than Einstein’s, “I know not weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.
Leeds maintains the Victorian tradition of civic pride and providing culture free of charge at both the Henry Moore Institute Art Gallery and also the neighbouring Leeds Art Gallery.
Victorian wealth from the factories, mines and mills also funded spectacular glass roofed shopping arcades. There’s an aspirational grandeur to Thornton’s arcade of arches, lancet windows and winged lions which also houses the famous Ivanhoe Clock. Throughout these Mayfair-style arcades, independent shops largely target high-end luxury.
Though ironically it was a 4 x 6 feet market stall, opening for just two days a week at Kirkgate Market that went on to make retail history. Founder Michael “Don’t ask the price it’s a penny” Marks soon needed help and recruited Tom Spencer. A century on in 1984, a clock was installed in the Kirkgate covered market, to celebrate the first trading from a tiny stall that went on to become the Marks and Spencer empire.
Back in the 1980s, the clock drew such crowds that traders wanted it removed as they blocked the market’s thoroughfares. Today the M&S clock is only a minor attraction in a Grade 1 listed covered market; Europe’s largest it has the vibrant colours of the markets of Peshawar, the aromas of a Damascus medina and the variety of Marrakech’s souks. Around 240 stalls have a truly global offering – including cosmetics, halal meat, music, prayer mats, saris and Thai massage.
Self-appointed ‘Unofficial Capital of Yorkshire’, a county with a larger population than Scotland, Leeds also claims to be the foodie capital of the north. Street food at Kirkgate Market backs up that claim, capturing global tastes from curries to pad Thai in a few hundred square metres. Busy from breakfast to supper, the Yorkshire Wrap Company capturing the flavours of breakfast, slow roast beef or pork in a Yorkshire pudding is a local favourite.
Adjacent to the market sits the bus station. Hopefully, you’ve forgotten Leeds’s 1970s claim to be Motorway City when the M1 speared north from the Soft South. Now the centre is largely pedestrianised and buses fanning out from the centre are cheap and plentiful. One route, the 840, covering the 75 miles to Whitby, has been voted England’s most scenic bus journey. Taking four hours to reach the old seaport, with a stopover for a fish ‘n chip lunch, it makes for an epic slow-travel day out.
Some of Leeds’s heritage and indeed England’s sporting lore lies out in the suburbs. At Elland Road, Leeds United supporters optimistically pat the statue of former skipper Billy Bremner and hope that topflight soccer, and then European glory nights, will return soon. Out in the leafy and affluent suburb of Headingly, cricket fans rate the Botham 1981 and Stokes 2019 extravaganzas on a par with Jesus’ loaves and fishes miracle.
As well as urban appeal, Leeds is the Gateway to the Dales and Brontëland. Between city and country, Weetwood Hall Estate is a four-star hotel based around a Manor House dating from 1625. Given a major make-over by 19th century printing baron Alf Cooke, the comfortable hotel sits in a peaceful birdsong pocket of five rustic acres. An ideal place to park-up for a few days whilst taking a bus into the city or into the Dales, before returning for dinner in the Convive Restaurant or pub-style dining in The Stables.
You may be enjoying a relaxing break, but Leeds is becoming one of those cities that never sleeps. Undoubtedly it is a work in progress, epitomised by the current regeneration of the 19th century grandiose Leeds Town Hall scheduled to bring a new look to the city’s culture and entertainment in 2026.
Next steps
Drop in on https://www.visitleeds.co.uk for more information on the city. Or speak to our advisors to plan and book a UK city break.
