Church Lane

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Looking east towards 'Druggist’s Corner'	the old Rate Office
Church Lane, looking west	Church Lane, looking east

Church Lane

Church Lane is the main street in Pudsey. It is lined with shops. The Market Place (at Waver Green), Park, Bus Station, Post Office and St. Lawrence Church are all linked to Church Lane. The lane starts at the traffic lights at 'Druggist's Corner' and ends at the old Tram Terminus.

Before St. Lawrence Church was built in 1824 Church Lane was called Chapel Lane because it led to the old Anglican chapel of ease at Chapeltown. Standing next to a row of cottages stood the old Rate Office and Borough Surveyor’s Department. This was demolished around 1960 and the new Library built on the site. The row of cottages next to Rate Office too have gone making way for new shops and an enlarged market place.

In the photograph of the old Rate Office the man on the right is John Huggan, the Rate Office accountant. The Borough Surveyors Department and the Rate Office moved to the Town Hall when it was opened in 1912. These premises were then occupied for many years by a local building society which moved here from Manor House Street. Behind the Rate Office was Stansfield Square. Similar squares, yards and folds, usually named after the men who built them, were typical of Pudsey’s 19th century housing.

The photograph looking west was taken before the trams came in 1908. Today the row of cottages in the distance where Mrs. Parker had a little confectioner’s shop has been replaced by modern houses. The high wall and trees of the Congregational Church Manse garden have also gone. In the right foreground is the Park Hotel. In the 1880s when St. Lawrence Cricket Club had its ground across the road on what is now the park, the Park Hotel, then known as the New Inn, made a convenient club house. The New Inn was also the first meeting place of St. Lawrence Masonic Lodge.

The photograph looking west is the same stretch of Church as the photograph looking west and taken after the trams arrival in 1908. The spire on the right belongs to the Unitarian Church and has now been taken down as unsafe. It his was built in 1861 to designs of William Hill of Leeds. It was the first gothic style nonconformist chapel in Pudsey.

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