Headingley

Headingley is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road. Headingley is the location of the Beckett Park campus of Leeds Beckett University and Headingley Stadium. The vast majority of the area sits in the Headingley and Hyde Park ward of Leeds City Council and Leeds North West parliamentary constituency. Headingley was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Hedingelei or Hedingeleia when it was recorded that Ilbert de Lacy held 7 carucates (about 840 acres) of land. The name is thought to derive from Old English Head(d)inga 'of the descendants of Head(d)a' + lēah 'open ground', thus meaning "the clearing of Hedda's people". Headda has sometimes been identified with Saint Hædde. A stone coffin found near Beckett Park in 1995 suggests there may have been an earlier settlement in late Roman or post-Roman times. From Viking times, Headingley was the centre of the Skyrack wapentake or Siaraches, the "Shire oak". The name may refer to an oak tree that was a meeting place for settling legal disputes and raising armies. An ancient oak, said to be the Shire Oak, stood to the north of St Michael's Church until 1941, and gives its name to two public houses, the Original Oak and the Skyrack. During the 13th century William de Poiteven gave land in Headingley to Kirkstall Abbey, and in 1341 the remainder of the township of Headingley-cum-Burley was given to the monastery by the owner, John de Calverley. A map of 1711 shows Headingley as having a chapel, cottages and farmsteads scattered around a triangle of land formed by the merging of routes from north, west and south. Enclosed fields were situated around the settlement with a large tract of common land, Headingley Moor, to the north. In an 1801 census, Headingley's population was given as 300. An 1829 Act of Parliament enclosed Headingley Moor and the land was placed for sale. Around 30 workers' cottages encroached on the fringes of the moor before 1829.