In 1908 a large brick building was erected in St Michael's Lane, opposite the stadium of Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Club, and opened to the public as an American Roller Skating Rink. It was designed by the architect G. F. Ward of Birmingham. The building had a timber Belfast type roof with timber bowstring roof trusses to give a large uninterrupted clear span. Headingley Roller Rink was owned by The American Rink Co., a company set up by Chester Park Crawford and Frederic Wilkins. It was one of thirteen rinks opened by the company in 1908.
Roller skating had several waves of popularity through the 1800s and early 1900s. A boom in Britain started in Liverpool in 1907. An American rink manager called Chester Park Crawford, in association with Frederic Wilkins, opened a rink at Liverpool’s Tournament Hall. By 1909 there were five hundred roller skating rinks open across the UK. Five of these were in Leeds, in Headingley, Oakwood, Kirkstall, Hunslet and Chapeltown.
The American Roller Skating Rink in Headingley advertised itself as a venue for well-being, as a social destination, and as an arena for sport. The Rink exhorted, “If you would be graceful, learn to skate”, and offered three sessions of ‘high class roller skating’ every day, morning, afternoon and evening. The morning was free to all, the afternoon was free to ladies but one shilling to gentlemen, while the evening session cost everyone one shilling. Skates could be hired throughout the day for one shilling per session. (Books of tickets could also be bought, at reduced rates.)
The Rink boasted a military band and offered afternoon teas. And a Society Night was introduced every Wednesday, when all Skaters were to appear in Evening Dress – at no extra charge!
Then on 3rd, 4th and 5th February 1909, heats were held at the Rink in preparation for the Great International Mile Roller Race for the Championship of the World. The entrance fee was £1, to be returned to all who completed the mile in four minutes, and use of the Rink for practice was free to all competitors. The winner would receive £10, the second £5, and would go on compete with sixteen other prize-winners in the Great Final at Olympia in London on 26th February, for further prizes.
It was probably assumed that the close proximity of other sporting activities at the nearby Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Club would attract paying customers. However, the venture did not prove a financial success. Because of this the building was sold in 1913 to new owners who employed the Leeds architect C. T. Simpson to alter the premises into a factory by introducing an upper floor within the roofed space.*
After the War, the estate which bordered onto the railway line was developed with semi-detached houses, mainly between 1920 and 1939. The housing estate that was erected involved the demolition of the skating rink which was built on St Michael's Lane in 1908, and all told 73 pairs of semi-detached dwellings, 4 detached and 3 terrace houses were built in various styles, along what is now Newport View.
Article extracted from Frank Trowell, Nineteenth Century Speculative Housing in Leeds (doctoral dissertation, University of York, 1982), supplemented by information from newspaper advertisements in Leeds Mercury in 1909, and from Catherine Robins, ‘Skating in Edwardian Leeds’, Leeds Museums & Galleries, 18 May 2022, at https://museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/featured/skating-in-edwardian-leeds/
* Catherine Robins suggests that the rink was built on the site of Westfield Nurseries, later occupied by Headingley Works (Joinery) (as shown on the Ordnance Survey of 1919, published in 1934); this is now the site of a cricket academy.
