Back in Cornwall after our brief visit to Leeds

Barbara and I are back in Cornwall again after a 7 hour train journey from Leeds, where I have been attending the European Symposium on Comminution and Classification, held at the University.

Leeds University during the 60s was a red brick University of around 7000 students. Now it is barely recognisable from those days, a huge modern campus housing 36,000 students. Even the Houldsworth School of Applied Science, where I spent 6 years, was unrecognisable, and my old department of metallurgy no longer exists, now being materials.

Just around the corner from the Houldsworth was the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering, which shut its doors 20 years ago. Now Camborne School of Mines in the only institute in UK offering degrees in mining.

I had no interest in mining during my time at Leeds University in the 1960s so was unaware of the existence of nearby Middleton Park, an area which was intensively mined for coal in the 18th and 19th centuries. Barbara and I spent a very interesting morning there earlier in the week prior to the conference.

The Middleton Railway is now a heritage track carrying passengers to and from the Park to the excellent Railway Museum.

Originally the railway was built in the 18th century to supply the growing 18th century industries and households of Leeds with coal. In those days the state of the roads meant that it cost more to get the coal into Leeds than it did to get the coal out of the ground.  An Act of Parliament was passed in 1758 to allow the building of the railway and coal soon began to be transported from the mines at Middleton to Leeds Bridge. The original track was wooden and horses hauled single wagon loads into town. By the 1800s, the war with Napoleon had caused the price of horses and feed to rise dramatically and it was decided to convert the railway to steam.

Leeds itself has obviously changed enormously in half a century, but some of the pubs that I used to frequent (The Eldon, The Pack Horse) are still as scruffy as ever, but my favourite cinema, the Odeon on the Headrow is now a Sports Direct store. Hard to believe that I heard the Beatles performing live in there in 1964!

The former Odeon Headrow

In my final year as an undergraduate I shared a seedy flat with two fellow metallurgists in Headingley, close to the Yorkshire County Cricket ground, where Ben Stokes performed his Ashes heroics little over a week ago. In those far off days I had little interest in Cistercian monasteries so never visited nearby Kirkstall Abbey, as Barbara and I did on Wednesday afternoon at the end of ESCC '19.

This magnificent ruin, on the banks of the River Aire, is the remains of a monastery founded in the middle of the 12th century. It was disestablished in 1539 , during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII and awarded to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, but reverted to the crown when Cranmer was executed for treason in 1556.  

It's been an interesting week in Leeds, but disappointing as a nostalgia trip. As they say, never go back, in my case it just made me feel bloody old!

But despite the many changes, one thing that has not changed is the friendliness of the Yorkshire people - and that's praise indeed from someone with allegiance to the Red Rose!

Twitter @barrywills