Methley is a dispersed village in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough, south east of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is located near Rothwell, Oulton, Woodlesford, Mickletown and Allerton Bywater. The Leeds City Ward is called Kippax and Methley. It is within the triangle formed by Leeds, Castleford and Wakefield, and between the confluence of the River Aire and River Calder. The latter is crossed by Methley Bridge, the A639 road, () about a mile south-east of the village.
Location and history
Today, the village is often described in terms of the area around Church Lane, Main Street and Pinfold Lane. However, the buildings on these streets largely date from the 20th century – and this area does not represent the original geographical centre of the village. The original village was established near to Saint Oswald's Church, and in particular along Church Side. This is reflected in the 17th- and 18th-century buildings along Churchside and parts of Watergate. The village has a history of coal mining. At one stage there were five mines in operation in the village – Savile Colliery, Methley Junction, Foxholes (Scholey Hill), Newmarket, and Newmarket Silkstone. The last pit (Saville Colliery) closed in the mid-1980s.
Part of the village (the area south and west of the M62 motorway) was ceded to the City of Wakefield Metropolitan district council in the 1990s. This area, which includes the hamlets of Newmarket and Scholey Hill, was subject to a planning dispute regarding an industrial and leisure development as villagers feared increased traffic levels – particularly along the A642, B6135 (Newmarket Lane and Watergate), Park Lane and Churchside. Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government approved the development on 21 June 2012. The new stadium for Wakefield Trinity Wildcats Rugby league club will form part of the development and should be completed by 2015.
Methley was in the wapentake of Agbrigg in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1086. Methley was surveyed by the Tudor cartographer, Christopher Saxton, author of the first atlas of England (1577). However, the map is now lost.
Buildings
Methley Hall
Methley Hall was the former seat of the Earl of Mexborough. During the fourteenth century the de Waterton family married into the de Methley family and moved to Methley Hall, a large, imposing and solid castellated building, mostly spread over three storeys rising to four by the turreted entrance. An eighteenth century watercolour shows a great hall with a minstrels gallery and grand staircase, decorated and embossed ceiling with a full-length oriel window. Young Richard Plantagenet, Richard of York, lived here from the ages of four to twelve, with Waterton's family until 1423 when national events changed things. Robert Waterton was the custodian of Richard II whilst constable of Pontefract Castle from 1399 and later gaoler of James I of Scotland. He was esquire to Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV. The seat at Methley Hall was conferred in 1410 to Robert's brother John Waterton. The Hall, which featured in a 1907 edition of Country Life, was demolished in 1964, although the Mexborough Estate are still significant landowners in the district. Queen Mary (Mary of Teck), consort of H. M. King George V, visited the village in 1935 and stayed at the Hall as a guest of the Earl. Titus Salt leased Methley Hall from the Earl of Mexborough between 1856 and 1865 according to Salt's biographer Balgarnie.
Church
The parish church Saint Oswald's is a 12th century Grade I listed building which had a spire from the mid-18th century to 1937. The spire became unsafe and was dismantled. The Castleford-born artist Henry Moore was a frequent visitor to the church. Nikolaus Pevsner documented the church and Methley Hall as part of his Buildings of England series in the late 1950s. Alan Bennett visited the church in December 1998 as mentioned in his collection of writings Untold Stories (2005), a visit which was filmed as part of a special The South Bank Show charting the writer's early life.
"Fatty Cake" School House
The Old Pinder Green school house is a Grade II listed building dating from 1637 at the junction of Watergate and the main Leeds to Pontefract Road. The school closed in 1881 and became a private residence, now known as the Fatty Cake School House.