Harehills ❤️ Love

So we’re here, the last day of this Harehills Good News Advent Calendar – so I’ve saved one for my favourite features of Harehills, its park and green spaces.

Harehills is a densely built area, it was designed to accommodate as many people as possible, the people that lived here fed the industry of Leeds with manpower, with waves of immigration being brought to the area over the generations to keep the hungry beast that is Leeds fed.

However, for all that density, it is an area surrounded by trees and has two decent sized parks.

Harehills Park

The oldest in Harehills is Harehills Park, established in 1901 as part of what would be known as the ‘lungs of Leeds’. Green spaces were a vital part of the industrialised Leeds.

This is around the time that notables were taking an interest in the crowded and congested areas of the country, places where people were crammed in so tight, and squalor and deprivation were rife. Public Parks were one part of the antidote to this.

The park is largely a green space, with fields, sporting facilities, and now home to a lot of trees, (see advent day 16 for the big tree planting they did there).

It’s also home to the fabulously active and community-minded Harehills Park Bowling Club, which has a long history in the area. Recently there’s been a move for the community, via the Harehills Bowling Club, to take over and do something with the cottages on the site as they would make an amazing community resource. I would highly encourage anyone in the area to get involved in this effort when the opportunity arises.

There is a group for the Friends of Harehills Park, and Harehills Park Bowling Club has its own page too.

Banstead Park

From oldest to newest park, Banstead Park was established in the early eighties, after several streets of dilapidated back to backs were cleared away. It’s a two-acre site of sloping greens, with trees and hills, two playgrounds, and outdoor exercise equipment, plus an all-weather cricket pitch and a basketball court.

It’s a park I know well as, during the heights of lockdown, I would go for walks around it. It’s lovely, being on a slope it has some great views of Leeds city centre, you’ve got the gorgeous St Aidan’s right next to it. It’s a lovely, genuinely relaxing place.

It was also the site of the Harehills Winter Welcome and has been home to Harehill’s Christmas tree for a number of years now (it’s up the top of the park on Harehills Road).

I’ve previously done a post about Banstead park, in fact, the second-ever post on this blog was about Banstead Park, so I won’t belabour the point. It’s a great little park, with potential.

Potternewton Park

Potternewton Park isn’t strictly a Harehills Park, but it’s just off Harehills Lane as it passes through Chapeltown, but it’s Harehills adjacent.

It was purchased by the council round about the time Harehills Park, but Potternewton estate was already a thing, which meant it was able to open much earlier as a public park.

It’s a gorgeous tree-filled park, with lots of spaces for activities, several sporting groups, and long winding paths.

It’s home to the oldest West Indian carnival in Europe, with the Carnival procession starting and finishing at the park.

Beckett Street Cemetary

It feels odd to list a cemetery as a green space, but Beckett Street Cemetary is a gorgeous, and moving place to go. It’s full of history, the history of our area, our country. It’s also home to a meadow, and trees.

There are tours of the war graves there, people who gave their lives in World War One.

The meadow is gorgeous, and there have been efforts to turn it into a wildflower meadow.

Aside from tours of the historical war graves, there are other events that happen there, back in early Summer this year I went on a wild garlic foraging walk, (there’s a lot of wild garlic that grows there, and it’s a fantastic ingredient to work with), and other events.

It’s not morbid, it’s lovely. If you’re ever concerned, think of it this way, who wants to be forgotten? If we don’t appreciate a space like this, then the lives it represents will be forgotten.

You can find Beckett Street Cemetary over the road from St James and the Thackeray Museum of Medicine, on Beckett Street.

And the others

There are pockets of greenery all over, such as up at Catch on Hovingham Avenue, there’s allotments, brownfield sites left to green, and always you’ve got Green Gipton and Harehills, Harehills in Bloom, Back to Front all working towards making it greener still.

Just up the road, there’s Gledow Valley Woods, Gipton Woods, there’s Roundhay Park. All providing Harehills with an amazingly wooded backdrop. If you like nature, while Harehills might be a lot of brick and tarmac, it can still get you close and all you have to do is stretch out to get some nature.

You can find all the released Advent Posts here: Harehills Good News Advent Calendar 2021