The Knightsbridge of the North — and the doughnut of deprivation that still surrounds it

Had Lou Reed lived in Leeds rather than New York, his signature tune ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ could just as easily have been inspired by the derelict, crime-infested Holbeck area of the city as by the mean streets of Harlem and the Bronx. In the Seventies and Eighties Holbeck, just a five-minute stroll from the city centre, was Leeds’s guilty secret. It was the haunt of drug addicts, prostitutes, alcoholics and criminals, while its sprawling, post-apocalyptic landscape was a chilling study in urban decay.
This didn’t seem to matter to most people, least of all to the city council. But for students of history it was a terrible shame. For unloved Holbeck had been the engine room of the industrial revolution in Leeds, the catalyst for the city’s rise to prominence in the late-Georgian and Victorian eras. It was here that Matthew Murray, an unsung pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, developed textile machinery and, crucially, built some of the first steam engines in the early 19th century. The Round Foundry, where Murray worked, is the earliest surviving example of a purpose-built engineering works in the world and is of international importance.
Now, 25 years after Holbeck hit rock bottom, it is being restored to its former glory. The criminals have dispersed and only a few prostitutes, possibly hoping for richer pickings, lurk nervously on the sidelines. Even the pub where Matthew Murray’s arch-rival James Watt spied on him is open for business again. The Round Foundry, the heart of the revitalised Holbeck Urban Village, is now a classic mixed-use development, even featuring a ‘media centre’. Today Holbeck is home to another technological revolution in Leeds, some 200 years after the first one.