Day 8: Hidden Treasures

 

There’s something fulfilling about finding hidden treasures of any kind. Great stories gone untold; sights that nobody else knows of; places left quiet and secluded. This was a day laden with discoveries, great and small.

Kirkgate Market is of course hardly a hidden treasure. Proud of its status as Europe’s largest indoor market, it has always – and will always – draw crowds. Its true undiscovered riches are to be found inside.

Walk down its every aisle, or visit the stalls outside where traders gather day after day, shopping there is an experience. The hollering, the bartering, the talking: it is life in all its theatricality, set inside its own playhouse, the grandiose Victorian structure which has long reigned at the midst of Vicar Lane. It is Yorkshire’s own Aladdin’s Cave.

Nick and Rebecca took me on a tour, though it was more like wandering around a place I already knew, just with different people to accompany me.

I visited the market with my parents and my grandparents whenever I came with them into town. Cod from the fish market (skinned and boned) was always a big treat; my grandma would buy a leg of lamb or a chicken for her Sunday roast from butchers’ row – though now of course ASDA is just a short drive away, cheap and convenient, and (arguably) just as good.

My tour-guides are the driving force behind The Source, a social enterprise based inside Kirkgate Market which brings together all the culinary delights the market has to offer, with food demonstrations, promotions, all sorts. Their vision is to bring the glory days back to Kirkgate Market once again.

The local press regularly dwells on the demise of the market, and some earnest supporters and friends of the old institution are doggedly fighting to secure its future – as though it is some kind of cultural establishment that needs to be preserved.

It is of course no such thing. Kirkgate Market is a place of business, one of the last bastions of what some might call real capitalism, where traders come to make money and customers to look for a good deal. Nick and Rebecca at The Source know this, and they are trying to galvanize a movement to bring the market well and truly into the twenty-first century, making it more responsive to modern-day consumer habits.

Why, for instance, does it not open on Sundays? Why does it not open during the evenings when people have finished work? Why did the first market trader with a Twitter account only go online a couple of weeks ago?

It is a huge task, but it needs to be done. Kirkgate Market doesn’t need platitudes about its proud history and its cultural place; it just needs business! Nick and Rebecca get this, and I hope they do well: I want to take my kids there some day to buy a leg of lamb for a special occasion and get them a quarter of cola bottles too, just like when I was young.

There was one lady taking her young daughter on the red Leeds City Sightseeing bus when I boarded a Clarence Dock later in the afternoon. Sadly however, it was just the two of them and me who were driven around for an hour. When I occasionally see the bus driving through town, it is sad how few visitors (and locals for that matter) are taking the tour – especially compared to the bus operated by the same firm in Oxford (and Oxford really is not as special as people think).

In England, the firm runs buses in London as well as cities such as Bath, Windsor, York and the like – by and large places which are important to visitors because of their history. It is telling that Leeds is one of the few to which visitors come for what it offers here in the present-day. And interesting too that out of the modern industrial northern cities, they chose us first – rather than, say, Manchester or Liverpool.

The tour takes you from Clarence Dock and the Royal Armouries, as far north as Woodhouse Lane and the university’s magisterial Parkinson Building, passing by the train station, through City Square, out eastward to the market and as far as Quarry Hill.

I remember when I first read that the bus was coming to Leeds. I told some of my university friends who scoffed accordingly. I tried defending my city, telling them about Tetley’s Brewery and the Town Hall.

Now that I’ve taken the tour, my defence will be far more aggressive. The on-board commentary tells you tales of ambitious people driven to do great things, and build impressive monuments, making their mark on the city. Whether it’s the old printworks where Alf Cooke made his playing cards, Centenary Bridge so named for the city’s hundredth Lord Mayor, the Victoria Quarter now built on the site of the grim old backalleys and slaughterhouses of Briggate, or even the history of the Majestyk cinema turned nightclub where my maternal grandma and granddad first met – you’ll see the city through new and inspired eyes.

Like many other buses coming into Leeds city centre from the east, it takes you up Kirkgate and towards the market, almost passing a wonderful store which comes highly recommended – all the more so after they invited me in for a cuppa and a look-around to finish off the day.

Birds Yard is more a thriving community than a shop; situated opposite the Duck & Drake, it brings together a series of small shops connected to each other where independent local designers sell their wares. On one floor alone Bo Carter, Clara and Chloe are each at work in their own cosy boutiques, all of which are spaces for hand-crafted, bespoke, vintage treasures of all kinds: ladies’ clothes, jewellery, homewares.

That stretch of Kirkgate is rather a depressing, derelict walk these days; but the hidden treasures you’ll find at Birds Yard mean you could strike gold if you step off the bus there the next time you’re in town.

For further background as to Mark’s challenge check out ‘28 days later’