Seacroft

Seacroft is an outer-city suburb/township consisting mainly of council estate housing covering an extensive area of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It lies in the LS14 Leeds postcode area, around east of Leeds city centre. It sits in the Killingbeck & Seacroft ward of Leeds City Council and Leeds East parliamentary constituency. The population of the corresponding Leeds City Ward was nearly 18,000 in 2001 and fell to 14,426 in 2011. The name is often used as a catch-all for Seacroft and the neighbouring areas of Whinmoor and Swarcliffe, other large east Leeds council estates which merge into each other. Seacroft includes one of the largest council estates in the country and Yorkshire's second-largest council estate, after Bransholme in Kingston upon Hull. The latter, however, was part of Humberside county from 1974 to 1996. Because of its size, Seacroft has often been referred to as a town. The original vision, envisaged by the council, was that it would be a 'Town within the City Limits', and the Seacroft Civic Centre was often referred to as the 'Seacroft Town Centre'. Seacroft was at one time a small village between Leeds and York. The village green, known as "The Green" still exists, and is one of the oldest in the country. It has the Cricketers Arms pub on the north side and St James parish church (built 1845, architect T. Hellyer) on the south side. John Wesley preached on The Green, and as a result a Wesleyan Chapel (Methodist Church) was built close by. Seacroft Green has an active residents' association. File:The Green, Seacroft 11 Sep 2017.jpg|The Green File:SeacroftGreenHouses.jpg|Houses on The Green File:CricketersArms2009.jpg|The Cricketers Arms, The Green File:StJamesSeacroft09.jpg|St James's Parish Church (C of E), The Green (1845) History of Seacroft Seacroft village is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086). Evidence of much earlier inhabitation was found during construction of the estate in the 1950s. A stone axe dating from the Neolithic age (3500–2100 BC) was found on Kentmere Avenue.