Mount Street, Oatlands Mount, Harrogate, 1997

Image: © Anthony Eden Taken: Unknown

This is the north side of Mount St that was constructed in about 1880; the 1891 Census records 52 houses being in Mount St. It starts in Leeds Rd (behind camera) and extends down to Cromwell Rd where the playing field is; before that area was a playing field it was a council rubbish tip (certainly in the 1940s) with the entrance for rubbish lorries being in Hookstone Road. In those far off days rubbish was mostly cinders from domestic coal fires and this resulted in the tip being a wonderful Martian landscape for kids to play on. Prior to that it was part of a brick works and the area was indeed known as 'Brickfields'. It was in 1883 when a Methodist Chapel was being created on the corner of Mount St and Gladstone St that the name became Oatlands Mount as Brickfields was not quite, well, 'nice'. The chapel was made from Oatlands bricks and it was in 1956 that the exterior face was covered in pebbledash. Before the construction of the Methodist Chapel, there was a church mission school in Mount St and this may have been the building half way down - visible to the left of the lamp post in the photograph.

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