The Roundhay (Pub)

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Oakwood Church Leeds



Home Walk Around The Clock

There has been a public house on this site since about 1840 and for much of its time it had its own brew house. The original building, flanked by cottages, opened almost directly on to the pavement


It has traded under several names including ‘The Gipton Wood Inn’, ‘The Gipton Wood Hotel’, or more simply ‘The Gipton’ but is now called ‘The Roundhay’


Walking up Roundhay Road and passing Gipton Wood, Goodalls Illustrated Royal handbook to Roundhay Park says:


“Here the pedestrian, will be thankful for the grateful shade of the variegated foliage or for the opportunity of rest and refreshment at the only ‘house of entertainment for man and beast’ between, this place and his journey's end. Or the visitor who takes the road not on foot may observe the practice of old coaching-days, known as ‘washing the horse's mouth out’.”


In the last few decades of the original building’s existence there was a bowling green behind it, apparently of county match standard, which was used by the Gipton Wood Bowling Club. A sign pointing to the Bowling Green appears on the Postcard displayed in the gallery on this page


It was certainly a place of refreshment for local Quarry workers


It has been said to be popular ‘local’ with thirsty miners from The Gipton Pit for whom it was the nearest Inn, though a fair walk across pasture and through Gipton Wood


A few years before World War Two the original building was demolished and replaced by the present design complete with car park, presumably to attract a geographically wider base of more affluent customers reflecting Oakwood’s rapidly growing and relatively prosperous population


In the middle 1900s it was a popular gathering point for Wrestlers



Notes


Download

1920s Map of Oakwood


Articles


Links

Quarrying


Trams


Wrestling


Goodalls Illustrated Royal Handbook to Roundhay Park 1872 (Page 9 -The Woods of Gipton)


Contact

history@oakwoodchurch.info

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