10 Facts About Briggate

Briggate is a pedestrianised principal shopping street in Leeds city centre, England.

Briggate's name comes from brycg, the Old English for bridge and gata, the Old Norse for a way or a street.

When Leeds became a borough, land on either side of Briggate was allocated into 30 burgage plots for tradespeople to carry out their business, setting the style and layout of the street today.

Briggate built a town house at the north end and extended the street into what is New Briggate, then New Street.

Briggate endowed the St John's Church which opened in 1634 to the west of New Street.

Related searches

Land on Briggate, owned in the medieval form of long strips leading in both directions from the street, was suitable for the construction of shopping arcades, beginning with Thornton's Arcade in 1878.

In 1819 Alice Mann's bookshop and publishers on Briggate, according to the Leeds Intelligencer, appeared 'to be the head quarters of sedition in this town'.

Briggate was pedestrianised and closed to private vehicles in 1993, and in 1999 was paved with York stone and granite setts.

In 2008 the 1970s-built Burton's Arcade at the southern end of Briggate was demolished to make way for the Trinity Quarter that opened in March 2013.

Feature of Briggate is its yards: more open areas behind the buildings on the street, accessed by a narrow alley or through a covered way.