A LEEDS LIFE
MARKET
MEMORIES
Pat Rowlands
b. 1937
Interviewed by Hilary Brosh
Pat Rowlands’ family came to Leeds from Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century. Pat can’t be sure of the exact location – she remembers her Granny saying, “Every five minutes there was a war and the border kept moving.” Some of Pat’s most evocative childhood memories are of Leeds Kirkgate Market, where her grandmother sold curtain material.
My grandmother opened a stall in the early 1920s when my mother was a toddler. And that stall was there until the fire in 1978 [when] it got burnt out. My grandmother ran it till I was about 16. [After] she died, her son-in-law took it on.
As an 11, 12-year-old, I used to go down on a Saturday and help sell on their stall in the market. In the school holidays, I always used to go and help. I loved helping. I used to measure the material and cut it and work out the money. It was down at the bottom end, near the outside door. My granny's shop was a lock-up shop just at the side. Next door to her shop was a sweet shop, and her brother-in-law (my great-uncle) worked in the sweet shop, which was lovely for me when I went on a Saturday because they always used to sneak some sweets out to me.
My granny, she spoke what you call broken English. She'd never learnt to read and write. She came over here when she was about 13 and she'd never had any schooling, because they didn't have any money. It bothered her that when she went to the wholesalers, and she was assigned to pay for whatever she'd ordered, she could only put a cross. But they always accepted it.
Most of the stallholders at that bottom end of the market were Jewish in those days. A lot of them were in curtaining, clothing, and they were all towards the bottom end. They used to bring all the rolls of cloth out onto trestles outside. The other stallholders would be shouting, to get trade. It was very competitive. But my granny didn't need to do that. Her customers used to come, she had a loyal following. There was a big stall opposite my grandma's, it was open on four sides, and the owner stood in the middle. I think they were called either Goodman or Goldman. I can picture them. They lived in Chapeltown. We all lived in Chapeltown in those days.
If you came in from Vicar Lane, it was the smell of flowers because all the flowers were at the top. It was really nice. And as you progressed down, it was less nice, shall we say. The fish was on the right-hand side and it sloped down to the outside door, to the outside market. And it came back up to my grandma's row. I can remember there was a stall, he sold lampshades and cups and saucers and all that sort of thing. That used to fascinate me as a child. There was one with jewellery - to a kid it was like Aladdin's cave. There was such a variety of things. There was a cheese stall. There was wood, DIY stuff. I liked the top end of the market, because there, I don't know if it was a Polish shop, but it was certainly North European - with all the exotic things that were completely unknown. There was a shop where you could get your stockings invisibly mended. It was quite magic.
I was a little bit nervous [in the market] because it was so high and it was dark. When you looked up, there was all the wrought iron. It was like a balcony. I believe there was a cafe up there. But I would never have ventured up there. My mother wouldn't go in the market. She was a very nervy person. And she used to hear stories about rats. “Make sure you lock up properly because the rats will be running round!” So she would never buy food, or anything from the market - because the rats might have been there.
Cough Candy was a character. He was a Jewish man. He always used to sell some kind of cough mixture or cough candy, literally. I don't know what his real name was. He was always called Cough Candy. It was his nickname. And then years later, when he retired, he used to sit in that Kirkgate entrance, raising money for St Gemma's. He sat at a little table, day after day. He was there for years. Always raising money. And sometimes you'd see him outside Marks and Spencer's. Woodbine Lizzie - she was a character. I can just picture this little, wizened woman wandering around looking a bit scruffy, scrounging money to buy five woodbines. You could buy them in fives in those days.
“There was a shop where you could get your stockings invisibly mended. It was quite magic.”
Pat lived in Chapeltown and her family ran Cantor’s Fish Shop – which is still there today.
Mr. and Mrs. Cantor, my great-grandparents, didn't speak a word of English. I used to go to Cantor's. I spent a lot of time there, because we lived just along Chapeltown Road. I used to love it when they were making the fish cakes. It fascinated me.
Pat also has fond memories of her father, who grew up in Canada. He came to Leeds in his early twenties, started working at his mother-in-law’s stall. Pat recalls meeting her father for the first time.
My mum had taken me to the Forum Cinema in Chapeltown. I was a toddler. It was a Deanna Durbin film. I loved her, she was beautiful. And we were watching this film in the dark. And this strange man came in and sat next to my mother and she was beside herself with excitement. We had to come out. And it was my father! I had no memory of him. Because he'd gone into the army while I was only a toddler. I must have been about 18 months old when the war broke out. And I think it was... I must have been three or three and a half.
Though she grew up during the war, Pat was too young to really know what was going on.
I can remember VE Day. I might have been seven. I came home from school, and my mother was hanging this enormous flag outside the kitchen window. We lived on the first floor, in the flat on Chapeltown Road.
I said, “What are you doing that for?”
And she said, “It's VE Day!”
Well, it was just double-dutch to me, because I'd not been aware of the war. Other than, I can remember the sirens going, and you had blackout curtains and you could see searchlights in the sky. To me, that was magic. I didn't realise it was anything serious. Because they never talked about what was going on in front of you.
Pat moved on from her Granny’s stall and worked for Marks & Spencer – a firm that had started in Leeds Kirkgate Market many years before! “I loved it,” Pat recalls. “I stayed there for a few years.” After a while, Pat got married, had her own family and worked briefly at Crown Topper, a wig firm where her father worked. Eventually she settled at the civil service, finding fulfilment working in the Crown Court as a judges’ clerk.
Though now in her 80s, Pat’s memories of Leeds Kirkgate Market are still fresh and vivid. As well as helping out at her Granny’s stall as a child, Pat would go to buy food most days when she was working in the city centre. However, as she says, I haven't actually been in Leeds market for years.” Hopefully, sharing her memories for this piece will inspire Pat to return to the market to see what has changed!