Leeds, the first town in Yorkshire, and fifth in England in point of population, is a parliamentary and municipal borough, returning since 1885 five members to the House of Commons. By rail it is 25½ miles SW. of York, 196 NNW. of London, and 112 SSE. of Carlisle. It is situated in the north-west of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the valley of the Aire, and is the seat of important manufactures, especially of clothing in all its branches. The ready-made clothing industry, especially, gives employment to more hands than anything else. The woollen trade carried on here, and in the surrounding towns and villages, exceeds in extent that of any other part of England. It has been estimated that general goods to the annual value of £11,000,000 pass through the warehouses in Leeds. The iron industries, which have been largely developed, employ about 30,000 persons, and are now as important as the woollen manufactures. The manufacture of leather is carried on in some of the largest tanneries in the kingdom, and about 100 firms are engaged in making boots and shoes. The other chief manufactures are those of locomotives (both for rail and tramway), agricultural machines, glass, paper, tobacco, oil, chemicals, earthenware, worsted, and silk. Formerly flax-spinning was extensively carried on, but it is now fast dying out. It will thus be seen that Leeds depends for its prosperity not upon any one staple industry, but upon the great variety of its manufactured products. The goods traffic by rail, canal, and river is immense.
There are thirty-four churches in Leeds, eight Roman Catholic and about eighty dissenting places of worship. The chief church is St Peter's, which is in Kirkgate, and was rebuilt in 1838 at a cost of £29,770. It is 180 feet long by 86 wide; the tower is 139 feet high, and contains a peal of thirteen bells. The church also contains some fine monuments, one of which was erected in memory of those natives of Leeds who fell in the Crimea. The most interesting church in the town is St John's, New Briggate, consecrated by Archbishop Neile in 1634, an almost unique example of a 'Laudian' church, and still retaining the original fittings. The other principal buildings are chiefly of recent erection. The town-hall, completed in 1858, is 250 feet long, 200 feet broad, and the tower is 225 feet high. It covers 5600 square yards. The great hall is 161 feet long, 72 feet wide, and 75 feet high. It is richly decorated, and contains one of the largest and most powerful organs in Europe, besides statues of Edward Baines and Robert Hall, formerly members for the borough. There are also colossal statues of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort in the vestibule, and of Wellington in the front of the building. Contiguous to the town-hall are the municipal buildings (comprising, besides the various corporate offices, reading-room, free library, and fine art gallery), and the school-board offices, the whole forming two handsome and substantial blocks of buildings.
The General Infirmary was erected in 1868 from designs by Sir G. G. Scott, at a cost of £120,000, and contains accommodation for 300 in-patients. The mechanics' institute, erected in 1867 at a cost of £25,000, contains a lecture-hall accommodating 1700 persons. The grammar-school, built in 1859, at a cost of £13,000, from designs by Barry, is a cruciform Decorated structure. Other buildings are the Corn Exchange, a handsome structure of an oval form; the new post-office (fronting the handsome City Square); the Yorkshire Penny Bank; Brown's Bank; the Coliseum, the most convenient public hall in the town; the Philosophical Hall, with a fine museum; the Wesleyan training-college, erected in 1868; Turkish Baths (cost £14,000); Beckett's Bank, a fine work by Sir G. G. Scott. There is also a library of 80,000 volumes, founded by Priestley in 1768. Among charitable institutions may be mentioned the Dispensary; Hospital for Women and Children; Tradesman's Benevolent Society; Industrial Schools; Convalescent Home; a handsome work-house; the Reformatory at Adel, where about sixty juvenile criminals are usefully employed in agricultural and other occupations. Leeds has also a Royal Exchange, which was opened in 1875, a Stock Exchange, two general markets—one of which is a handsome structure of iron and glass—a new cattle-market, white-cloth hall, three terminal railway stations giving access to seven railway companies, eleven banks, and four theatres. The old coloured-cloth hall was pulled down in 1889. The Yorkshire College, an important centre of higher education established in 1874, has now nearly forty professors and instructors in its two departments of science, technology, and arts and of medicine; it is affiliated to the Victoria University. A large and imposing pile of Gothic buildings was devoted to its use in 1885; the new School of Medicine, opened in 1894, cost £40,000. Some sixty Board schools, accommodating 65,000 children, have been erected since 1870, including the Central Higher Grade School for 2000 scholars, opened in 1889, and the Southern Higher Grade School. A complete system of tram-lines radiates from the centre of the town to all the outlying suburbs, electricity (on the trolley system) being the motive-power. Kirkstall Abbey (q.v.) is about 3 miles from Leeds. Roundhay Park, 3 miles from Leeds, was bought by the corporation in 1872, at a cost of £140,000, and converted into a recreation ground for the use of the public. Adel Church, about 4 miles from Leeds, was erected 1140. Near it have been found remains of a Roman station. Pop. (1851) 172,270; (1881) 309,112; (1891) pop. of borough—since 1888 a 'county borough'—367,505. Since 1893 the mayor is styled Lord Mayor.
Amongst Leeds worthies are Dean Hook (q.v.), who was vicar of Leeds; Priestley, theologian and chemist; Cope and Rhodes, the artists; the Teales, physicians, &c.; besides the Becketts, the Baines's, the Gotts, the Fairbairns, the Denisons, the Kitsons, and other prominent families, which have been closely identified with the interests of the town, and whose members have been noted for their public spirit and philanthropy. Among the books on Leeds may be mentioned Ralph Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, or Topography of Old Leeds (1715); Baines's Historic Sketch of Leeds (1822); and Jackson's Guide to Leeds (1889).