History of Leeds

Loidis, from which Leeds, Yorkshire derives its name, was anciently a forested area of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet. The settlement certainly existed at the time of the Norman conquest of England and in 1086 was a thriving manor under the overlordship of Ilbert de Lacy. It gained its first charter from Maurice de Gant in 1207 yet only grew slowly throughout the medieval and Tudor periods. The town had become part of the Duchy of Lancaster and reverted to the crown in the medieval period, so was a Royalist stronghold at the start of the English Civil War.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Leeds prospered and expanded as a centre of the woollen industry and it continued to expand rapidly in the Industrial Revolution. Following a period of post industrial decline in the mid twentieth century Leeds' prosperity revived with the development of tertiary industrial sectors.

The name "Leeds" is first attested in the form "Loidis": around 731 Bede mentioned it in book II, chapter 14 of his Historia ecclesiastica, in a discussion of an altar surviving from a church erected by Edwin of Northumbria, located in "...regione quae vocatur Loidis" ('the region known as Loidis'). This was evidently a regional name, but it subsequently occurs in the 1086 Domesday Book denoting a settlement, in the later Old English form Ledes. (The 1725 map by John Cossins spells it as Leedes.) The name is not Old English in form, so is presumably an Anglo-Saxonisation of an earlier Celtic name. It is hard to be sure what this name was; Mills's A Dictionary of British Place-Names prefers Celtic *Lādenses 'people living by the strongly flowing river'. This name may be derived from the Brittonic *lāto- meaning "rut, heat" (in animals ready to mate), an element represented in Welsh as llawd, "heat", and possibly cognate to Greek plōtós, "flowing".

It has been surmised that the name denoted either a forest covering most of the kingdom of Elmet, which existed during the fifth century into the early seventh, or an early river-name, presumably that of the River Aire. An inhabitant of Leeds is locally known as a Loiner, possibly derived from Loidis.

Leeds City Council maintains "a photographic archive of Leeds" using the title "Leodis", thought to be an Old English or Celtic form of the name.

There is no dependable reference to any place that might be associated with Leeds, before Bede's mention in circa 730 AD; and that was to a region rather than a village or town; thus little is known of any Roman, British or Anglo-Saxon predecessors to Leeds.

As well as scattered Bronze Age objects throughout the Leeds area, there were, according to 19th-century records, two Bronze Age barrows on Woodhouse Moor. In the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age, the vicinity of Leeds was associated with the Brigantes; as well as possible Roman-period earthworks, a paved ford across the River Aire has been discovered, and is supposed to date to Roman times. Brigantian remains have been found in villages and towns in the vicinity of Leeds, and there are Roman remains in nearby settlements, notably at Adel, and at Alwoodley; in the suburb of Headingley a stone coffin was found in 1995 at Beckett's Park which is believed to date from Roman times.^{[citation needed]}

Bede's account indicates activity in the vicinity of Leeds, though not necessarily near the town as it is now known: his unidentified place-name Campodonum might refer to an important place in the area; and one Abbot Thrythwulf had a monastery nearby in Bede's time, though it did not last long into the medieval period. Campodonum is possibly, Elmet capital and Roman fort (analysed as camp+(l)odonum), Cambodunum. Cambodunum is a possible earlier Latin form name of Camelot, likely due to its location and early Brittonic ties.