Grass triangle at the junction of Delf Hill, Lower Edge Road and Tofts Grove

Image: © Humphrey Bolton Taken: 25 Dec 2013

This grass triangle is at a very old road junction. The road to the right is Tofts Grove, leading to the centre of Rastrick and down Rastrick Common to Brighouse Bridge, on the way to Leeds. To the left is Lower Edge Road, leading to Elland and onwards to Halifax or Rochdale. The road from Leeds to Rochdale is part of John Ogilby's road from York to Chester on Plate 89 of his road book 'Britannia', published in 1675. It became a turnpike road between Leeds and Elland c. 1740, and is shown as a main road on Thomas Jefferys's map of Yorkshire, 1775, which also shows the road in the foreground, Delf Hill. Delf Hill connects, via Slade Lane, to Clough Lane, which is the other old main road through Rastrick. Clough Lane is part of Ogilby's road from Barnsley to Richmond via Halifax and Skipton, on Plate 49 of Britannia, and later became the Dewsbury and Elland road, turnpiked c.1759. The triangle of land, with a building on it, is shown on the Rastrick township map of 1824 and the 1850 six-inch map. The building is shown on 1:2500 maps up to the 1960s edition. Delf Hill, to the left of the triangle, was widened between the 1933 and 1960s editions. The road to the right was widened much earlier, between 1850 and 1894. The 1982 1:10000 map shows the whole triangle blank, so perhaps the building had been demolished by then. Until recently there was a bed of roses in the triangle, but this was grassed over during 2013, presumably part of the local government expenditure cuts.

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