My very first visit to Leeds was dominated by my discovery of the Kirkgate Covered Market. It must have been about the mid-1960s*; I was just an impressionable teenager from the cosseted South. What was it that struck me then, and remains somehow in my mind even now, as a vivid though admittedly vague memory ? The sights, the noise, the smells...the buzzing life in the place, and the scale of it all! As the market’s website now says: From shawarmas to chapatis, crepes to cockles and Yorkshire puds to fine patisserie, you'll find all sorts of good eats in one place. I can recall a huge sloping floor full of small stalls, crammed with goodies of all kinds: an ample range of meats, the cakes piled high, the fruits of many colours and the fish! Jars of things I couldn’t recognise. Women with headscarves and bulging shopping bags. The Yorkshire voices too must have been part of the exotic appeal. It was like entering the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul…

Fifty years later, when I was chewing over where I would retire to after my many years abroad (which includes Lancashire…) that exciting experience in the Leeds Market floated back into my mind. And the rest is history: here I am, finally settled.

-

* So it was before the 1975 fire and subsequent renovations.