British Towns and Cities: The City of Leeds

Arnold N. Shimmin pays an historical visit to the inventive Yorkshire city.

Experts in place-names are still divided about the meaning of the name of this city. The late Professor Moorman accepted “the place of the prince”, but research has failed to identify the prince. More recent investigations favour the meaning “the place of swamps” and the flat spread of the city is compatible with this interpretation. The discussion runs on and, in the meantime, Leeds has come to cover sixty square miles containing a population of 505,400 people. Within a radius of fifty miles there are approximately thirteen million inhabitants, a local market for a business venture as tightly packed as any in the Kingdom.

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