Words & photos: Mark Stevenson
In my last article, I made mention of Brown’s Field of Pasture’s Farm/Redcote.
The Browns seem to have taken over the running of the farm at Redcote from the Tattersall’s. The last mention of the Tattersall family is on the 1861 census where it says John Tattersall was a farmer of 60 acres employing four men living at Pasture Hill Farm (Redcote Farm may be the same as Pasture Hill Farm).
In 1881 Ellis Brown, 42, from Hampshire appears on the census with his wife Sally, three sons and one daughter. His occupation is that of a farmer but he is down as living at Wainman Row, possibly the one on Armley Town Street.
Redcote/Pasture Farm was about half a mile down the road from Wainman Row, so this may have been his farm at the time. On the 1891 and 1901 census, Ellis is down as a farmer at Redcote and his son Frank, aged 21, was an undergraduate at Oxford.
On the 1911 census Ellis, now 72, is still married to Sally, his wife of 49 years, but is now retired. His address was 18 Stanningley Road. His census entry was signed by someone else (I cannot read the signature) on behalf of Ellis.
In 1911 a John Brown, aged 49, from Menwith With Darley, Yorkshire, now lived at Redcote along with his wife Emmeline of 24 years. Also, his three sons and three daughters aged from 22 to 4 lived there along with his nephew, two servants and a boarder (crowded house).
While I was out looking for the location of Brown’s Farm I bumped into a walking-talking encyclopedia on Gotts/Armley Park.
The encyclopedia went by the name of Clive and he showed me the site of the farm (long since gone).
He told me that when the golf course at the park opened the farm was split into two dwellings, one for the park keeper and the other for the professional golfer to live in. They later became run down and were demolished.
He also mentioned the rubble from Sweet Street Flats was under part of the golf course, close to Lantern Lane, and the soil from when they dug out the swimming pool at Kirkstall Leisure Centre.