ABSTRACT
Jack Lane Elementary School, Hunslet, was a product of the 1870 Education Act and the School Boards, a cheapish-brick building which looked L-shaped from Jack Lane itself but hid parts at the back. Not far off, the M1 motorway, which ends only a few hundred yards from the very centre of Leeds, has cut a great swathe through Hunslet and traffic swishes by near the Jack Lane buildings. The history of the area all around, which included our Newport Street, is a microcosm of typical errors and re-tries in public housing over the last thirty years. Hunslet had at its core a solid body of workers in heavy industry, and those who lived around Jack Lane and its ancillaries were more often unskilled than skilled; most skilled men moved out even if only a few streets.
