Burmantofts 2.74

Burmantofts is an area of 1960s high-rise housing blocks in inner-city east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England adjacent to the city centre and St. James's Hospital. It is a racially diverse area, with sizable Afro-Caribbean, Irish communities and Asylum Seekers, but suffers the social problems typical of similar areas across the country. The area has a small selection of pubs and the Anglers Club on Nippet Lane. Burmantofts is perhaps most notable for Burmantofts Pottery and the former Burtons textile factory, which is still owned by Burtons, but only used as a storage facility. In the 1900s and early twentieth century, Burmantofts was a large centre of the textile industry.HistoryThe name comes from the half-acre parcels of land given to owners of building plots by the River Aire, thus Burgage Men's Tofts. The burgage men pursued craft businesses in the town, and grew crops on their tofts, such as grain which would be processed at the nearby mill on what is now Miles Hill.It was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield and coal mines and clay extraction led to works making bricks and earthenware. Notably in 1842 Lassey and Wilcock acquired 100 acres north of Nippet Lane, and found they were able to extract both coal and clay from the same mine and became coal sellers and brickmakers. In 1870 this became Wilcock and Co also selling drainage pipes, though this only occupied 4 acres, the rest being farmland. Further development of the site and of newer products led to Burmantofts Pottery, which was made there until 1957.