Michael Edwards gets a warm Yorkshire welcome at Weetwood Hall Estate
Created around a historic 17th century Jacobean Manor House, Weetwood Hall Estate offers the best of all worlds. Past and present, urban and rural.
This 114-room hotel elegantly sits between fizzing regenerating Leeds, unofficially the capital of Yorkshire, and the tranquillity of the Yorkshire Dales. Mix in Wuthering Heights drama from those Yorkshire lasses in Brontëland too. Equally unofficially, to many, Yorkshire is not just God’s own county but also God’s own country.
Weetwood Hall Estate continues to calmly watch the centuries slide by. Some parts of the building date from Henry Vlll’s days, with the Jacobean mansion began in 1625. When King James l was still keeping an eye on fractious northerners. Nowadays, Weetwood Hall Estate is probably looking sharper than it ever has, seamlessly weaving a historic past into a stylish contemporary present.
Our large feature room in the Jacobean Manor House, the Cooke room, is named after one-time estate owner Alf; a wealthy self-made printing man who became Leeds’ mayor. Gentle duck egg blues restfully blend with a carved stone beam to suggest Georgian overtones. Framed photographs of dry-stone walls, grazing sheep and babbling brooks tempt guests into Dales explorations.
Now, more than ever, with Leeds’ renaissance, Weetwood Hall has location, location and location on its side. Nine peaceful acres of birdsong buffer the estate from Leeds’ leafy but busy western suburbs. By presenting their room card key at the David Lloyd Health Club, in nearby Moortown, guests can access the facilities.
It is less than a two-mile drive to Headingley cricket and six miles, whisper it hopefully as your pat the bronze statue of the legendary Billy Bremner, to possibly premiership football at Elland Road. Merely five miles from Leeds-Bradford airport; Weetwood Hall Estate is one of the UK’s more sedate airport hotels. Buses run frequently and take around 30 minutes to arrive at Leeds bus station.
Contributing to Leeds’ proud claim to be the North’s foodie capital, Weetwood has the stylish Convive Restaurant flying the gastronomic flag. Alongside the inviting leather chairs and marble-style tables local sourcing serves up good honest Yorkshire fayre with an all-day menu: Ribblesdale Goats Cheese Crostini and Masham Pigs Cheek Donut feature among the starters.
Of course, the sausages for the Bangers & Mash are from Ilkley and the 12-hour Leeds Beef Bourginon includes local ale. Paying homage to Leeds’ multi-cultural heritage, a small bowls chicken masala, presented on a wood board, looks almost too good to eat. Food miles for the dessert are minimal too; Yorkshire Parkin and Pear and Yorkshire Tea Mille Feuille amongst the options.
As a living piece of English history, the estate has to feature a pub, and The Stables offers more informal dining. Though the Yorkshire tradition of fish, chips and mushy peas appears on the menu at both Convive and The Stables. After all it’s not too far from the fishing port of Whitby.
Leeds continues the gastronomic heritage with an eclectic array of street food at Kirkgate Market. Look out for Turkish grilled fish, Caribbean Jerk chicken, and Vietnamese treats. For more homely tastes the Yorkshire Wrap Company serves breakfast, slow roast beef, slow roast pork and daily specials all wrapped within a Yorkshire pudding.
Regeneration is Leeds’ buzz word. On trend apartments, brasseries, cafes and cocktail bars have replaced the coal merchants, farriers, grease manufacturers and stone merchants of yesteryear. Though as 19th century folk would have said, “Where there’s muck there’s brass” and back in the 19th century, the city built spectacular glass atrium shopping walkways where the affluent could spend their crowns and guineas.
Ironically, it was a 4 feet x 6 feet trestle table stall, first pitched by Michael Marks in Kirkgate Market in 1884, that has outperformed most of the high-end retailers in those Victorian arcades. A clock in Kirkgate Market celebrates the birth of a retail empire that became Marks and Spencers.
In the style of Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Venice, visitors can take a yellow water taxi from near the rail station to The Royal Armouries. Alternatively, a riverside walk along the Leeds Liverpool Canal has art telling the story of some of Leeds most influential characters: Charles Turner Thakray who investigated the diseases of the Industrial Revolution, saxophonist and bandleader Ivy Benson who fought for equal pay for female musicians and suffragette Leonara Cohen, who living to a 105, also contributed to 1970s feminism.
At the Armouries, there is a raw, intense castle-like feel to a free-admission museum that seems battle ready. High ceilings were designed for the tallest of the weapons on display. Throughout the day films, dramatic re-enactments and talks put the weapons into their historic context.
Further west, Leeds Industrial Museum, at Armley Mills on the River Aire, once the world’s largest woollen mill, tells the story of the city’s development as a powerhouse for textiles, clothing, printing and manufacturing.
Though this prosperity came at a human price of gruesome injuries and debilitating illness in grimy Industrial Revolution Leeds: which prompted some of the medical developments chronicled at the Thackray Museum of Medicine.
Fortunately, Leeds has changed its tune since it proclaimed, half a century ago, that it was the “Motorway City of the Seventies”. With much of the compact central city pedestrianised, today’s green credo announces a city “where you don’t need a car to get around’.
If you ever feel that you’ve wrapped up the city then it’s time to dig out your hiking boots. The Dales Way, which starts in Ilkley and meanders north-west towards the Lakes, provides eminently walkable stretches. A gentle amble from Burnsall’s arched bridge, along the shallow River Wharfe, to Grassington for morning coffee or afternoon tea, captures the spirit of the Dales.
Even if the Weetwood Hall Estate staff don’t quite recite the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity their impeccably warm and welcoming service demonstrates that they are immensely proud of Weetwood Hall, Leeds and Yorkshire’s heritage. Though if you are around on Yorkshire Day, annually 1st August, you might hear them proudly plighting their troth.
Royal Armouries Image (C) Royal Armouries Museum. Thackray Museum of Medicine image (C) David Lindsay.
Tell Me More About Weetwood Hall Estate, Leeds, Yorkshire
Weetwood Hall Estate , Otley Road, Weetwood, Leeds, LS16 5PS
T: 0113 230 6000 E: sales@weetwood.co.uk
Double rooms, with breakfast, begin from £120 per night.
