Shackleton’s Fold was a street of just nineteen houses. ‘Yard’ might be a better description, and indeed it does appear as ‘Shackleton’s Yard’ on the earlier maps. In Yorkshire the use of the word ‘Fold’ would originally have referred to an enclosure for animals. Later it would have been a collection of cottages around a yard or cul-de-sac, and there is a sense of the rural about it. However, by the nineteenth century it had come to be used in urban areas, and here the pictures conjured up are altogether less picturesque: poor quality housing with cramped living conditions and shared toilets, thrown up for the growing working classes needed to work at the many local mills, foundries, coal pits, brickworks, railway yards and engine sheds during the Industrial Revolution. This was the kind of Fold to which Shackleton gave his name.

Shackleton’s Fold took the form of a narrow street with houses on either side, wider at the northern end where it met Whitehall Road, and just a ‘ginnel’ at the southern end, where it met Wortley Lane. That’s a Yorkshire dialect word: a ginnel is an alley, and in Leeds pronounced with a hard ‘G’, as in ‘give’. The houses were ‘back-to-backs’ in the sense that all the doors and windows faced onto the Fold. However, instead of the usual row of houses joined on to the ‘back’ and facing the other way, there was just a large expanse of brick wall, so that the term often used for these types of houses was ‘blind backs’. The smaller houses on the eastern side backed onto the playground of St John’s School, while the slightly larger houses of the western side backed onto a mill. Four of the smaller houses along the ginnel, looking out onto the back of the mill, would have had next to no natural light at all. That mill, and the larger triangular plot of land on which it stood, was owned by the Shackleton family.

Shackleton’s Fold existed for about ninety years, from sometime between 1841 and 1846 (to be determined) until about 1938, when it was demolished.

This One Place Study has been registered with the Society for One Place Studies since 30th September 2023; and at the time of registration was in the very early stages. It will focus on the type of housing, the people who lived there, the locality and the events of the ninety years during which Shackleton’s Fold existed which would have impacted on the residentss. This page is also at the early stages; more information will be added.

Below, is a list of records and further reading identified, together with my own progress in relation to their use. The records are divided into the property, the people, and maps. Below that there is a list of jurisdictions relevant to this specific location, and finally a list of further reading, again showing my progress. Other documents will be added as I become aware of them.

From time to time I publish a blogpost about an aspect of this research. As I do, they are linked here:

Housing the Urban Poor in 19th Century England

Remembering The Battle of Holbeck Moor

Meeting the people of Shackleton’s Fold

National Trust: Birmingham Back to Backs

Records Sets

People

Census 1841-1921 Transcription completed

1939 Register Transcription completed

Electoral Registers from 1860 Transcription completed 1860-1871 and from 1920-1938

Civil Birth & Death Indexes (via GRO)

Marriage Indexes (via Free BMD and Ancestry.co.uk)

Parish BMBs where they are available online – this will mostly be the Anglican and some Nonconformist records

Military Records, particularly for WW1

Property

To Do: Explore availability of documents at West Yorkshire Registry of Deeds

Maps

Tithe Map, 1846, and schedule Photographed at TNA, completed

Leeds City Council Housing Department. [1934] Map of the Slum Clearance
Areas and Housing Estates. (at Leeds Central Library) Photographed at Leeds Central Library, completed

Cornell Library: Sanitary Map of the Town of Leeds. [1842]

OS and other maps, available via National Library of Scotland

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Jurisdictions

Local Government: Municipal Borough of Leeds (1836–1889); County Borough of Leeds (1836 until demolition). Leeds was awarded City status in 1893.

Electoral Ward: Holbeck (1835-1881); New Wortley (1881 until demolition)

Civil Parish: Armley and Bramley

County: Yorkshire, West Riding

Registration District: Hunslet (1845-1862); Kirkstall (1862-1869); Bramley (1863-1925); Bramley & Holbeck (1925-1929); Leeds South (1929 until demolition)

Sub Registration District: Wortley

Ecclesiastical District: St John’s, New Wortley

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Reading

Online

E J Connell (Thesis): Industrial Development in South Leeds (1790-1914)

Robin Pearson (Thesis): The Industrial Suburbs of Leeds in the Nineteenth Century: Community Consciousness Among the Social Classes

Back to Back Houses (blog): A short history of back-to-back houses in Leeds from 1790 -1937

Robert Bevan: How Leeds Kept the Back-to-Back House Alive

Joanne Harrison: Back to Back Houses and their Communities

Joanne Harrison: The Origin, Development and Decline of Back-to-Back Houses in Leeds, 1787–1937

Joanne Harrison: Back-to-Back Houses in Twenty-First Century Leeds

West Leeds Life: How many back to backs survive today?

Mapping Urban Form & Society: Mapping Disease: Cholera in Leeds

The Health Foundation: Report on the sanitary conditions of the labouring population of Great Britain (Edwin Chadwick)

MyLearning.org: Annie’s Story: The life of a young girl living in Leeds 1930-1945

Books

M. W. Beresford: “The Back-to-Back House in Leeds, 1787-1937”. In: Stanley D. Chapman: The History of Working Class Housing. 1971. David & Charles, Newton Abbott

John Burnett: A Social History of Housing 1815-1970. 1980. Methuen & Co, London

W. R. Mitchell: A History of Leeds. 2000. Phillimore, Chichester

David Olusoga and Melanie Backe-Hansen: A House Through Time. 2020. Picador, London

Lucy Caffyn: Workers’ Housing in West Yorkshire 1750-1920. 1986. Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England/ West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council. HMSO, London

Roger Hutchinson: The Butcher The Baker the Candlestick Maker: the story of Britain through its census since 1801. 2017. Abacus, London.

(Other books about Leeds to be added)