You know that feeling when something just keeps niggling away at you? Like you just can’t quite move on with your life until you’ve got to the bottom of it?
The Exchange hadn’t even fully launched when the controversy over the signage at Leeds station blew up. But we felt like we’d never quite got the full answer. So for today, we commissioned a typography expert to analyse the lettering and tell us just what went wrong here. The full, shocking, truth is below — as well as news on a waste centre fire and a quirky terrace in Kirkstall.
Plus, we’re excited to announce our very first sponsor on The Exchange! We will occasionally work with specially selected sponsors to bring you things we think you’ll find interesting (this will always clearly be signposted as sponsored content). This helps us fund our journalism, as we work towards making The Exchange financially sustainable. The honour of being our first very sponsor goes to Yorkshire Sculpture Park — a huge thanks to them for their support.
(Dis)Connect at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
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Catching up:
Readers responded to Mia’s article last week — on her search for both cheese and friendship at the Fromage World Cup — with cheese tips aplenty. “Oh this cheese piece is a delight!” wrote reader Claire, who went on to recommend Cryer & Stott’s liquorice cheese (intriguing). Commenter Jelin K also alerted us to the existence of truffle scented Baron Bigod, which may well be a life-changing piece of information.
At the weekend, we published Brad’s investigation into the goings on at Sky Gardens, a development that was touted as the city’s most luxurious tower but whose construction partner, Torsion Construction, went into administration recently. That, Brad discovered, was only the tip of the iceberg, as investors spoke of high-pressure tactics and sunk costs as the project faltered at the hands of a developer with a very chequered track record. “No one seems to care what is being built is actually what is needed by the local community (it isn't) or by the credentials/character of who is building it (often shady people as in this article)” said commenter StoaOccultua.
The round-up:
👮A Leeds man who forced more than 100 girls into sexual acts and self-harm online has been sentenced for two years at Leeds Crown Court today, following a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation. The NCA said Justin Swaddle, pictured below, was arrested in October 2023 on suspicion of making and circulating indecent images. After police seized his devices, it transpired he’d been using platforms like Snapchat, Telegram and Discord to have hundreds of conversations with girls aged between 13 and 17 as part of a “Com group” — a community that thrives on sharing exploits including sexually coercing victims. Swaddle, who is now 20, was 17 at the time.
🛣️ Tired of being held up by Leeds roadworks? A “lane rental scheme” from Leeds City Council promises to charge companies up to £2,500 a day if their works clog up the city centre during peak hours on nearly 300 routes. LCC says it “encourages road and street works to be carried out in the least disruptive way possible.” Given that many of the works we’ve run into on our daily commutes have been from the council’s own initiatives, like the creation of bike lanes, it was interesting to see that this fee as much applies to the council’s “own works and works undertaken on its behalf.” Any surplus raised will be reinvested into roads, the council says.
♻️ A waste management centre in Leeds went up in flames over the weekend, with 12 fire crews and supporting teams of aerial units attending the initial blaze, which broke out in the small hours of Saturday morning, WYFRS said. The fire stretched crews so much that by the afternoon, WYFRS said it was “operating at high capacity due to a large volume of emergency incidents” with a plea to the public to not report anything non-urgent. As of Monday, a single crew remained at Valley Farm Road.
🚨 Truly harrowing scenes in Cookridge last May, after a street was evacuated when one of its residents, Paul Allen, surrounded the windows of his home with butane tanks and threatened to blow himself up, the YEP reported from court. Allen then held a chainsaw to his neck, before firing objects at his retreating neighbours with a catapult. While a negotiator talked to him, special response officers found their way in from upstairs, and after he threatened them with the chainsaw he was eventually restrained using pepper spray. Family said he was suffering “an acute mental-health crisis” after he was given a 16-month sentence, suspended for 24 months plus rehab and community service.
🏙️ A bit more insight into the lifestyle of Gareth Morgan, one of the directors at CityLife, the development company behind Sky Gardens — the focus of our investigative piece on Saturday. As mentioned in that piece, Morgan was recently a co-defendant in a High Court case relating to incomplete landscaping at Adelphi Wharf in Salford, missing a deadline to finish the works. In his defence, Morgan claimed he couldn’t afford the £930,000 needed, noting his “limited income” and saying that the only asset he owned was his house, of which his wife owns 50%. “I have no other assets or savings.”
The judge, however, wasn’t convinced, noting that Morgan’s house is “substantial with an indoor swimming pool and a billiards room,” perhaps not a million miles off the Sky Gardens dream Morgan promised. The judge added: “the totality of the evidence I have read and heard strongly indicates that Mr Morgan is well able to finance the completion of the landscaping.”
As part of our investigation, we reached out to Morgan and CityLife with numerous questions through various methods without any joy — until 5.24am today, when someone at CityLife said the comments had been shared with directors and that a response would be returned “ASAP”.
The big picture:
Photographer Paul Melling caught this heart-stopping image of a performance by Seeta Patel Dance troupe at the shores of the Mirror Pool during last month’s Bradford Festival. This West Yorkshire-based photographer shoots mainly on a Leica and can be followed on Instagram here.
The big story: Welcome to Leeps?
Wall of shame: Back in May, Leeds was shamed by r/UKtrains. A user from the 3,100-strong Reddit community posted a photo saying: “The new welcome signage at Leeds station looks terrible.”
Here’s the original post:
Closeup:
The revamp of the main entrance to Leeds Station has been under way all summer as part of a £46.1 million revamp (on top of a historic mill goit), and it has involved the building of a little tower that appears to serve as the main signage for those alighting in this great city.
“I was staring at this today wondering why it was so off,” wrote one user. User ArborealFriend decided that part of the issue the ‘d’ was a “p upside down.” “Welcome to Leeps,” added alan_turing_25.
The investigation so far: Are the ‘e’s wonky? Is the ‘d’ an upside-down ‘p’? What’s going on? These questions prompted a minor news cycle, with Leeds City Council press officers telling ITV news and the YEP that they are “aware of a potential issue with Welcome to Leeds signage.” And that’s where it was left.
Get the experts in: That is, until we decided to get a pro graphic designer on the case. One of our neighbours, Colin Grist, Creative Director at Few and Far digital agency, responded with commendable enthusiasm, embarking on a full visual investigation.
So here is chapter and verse on what is really going on with the station sign’s lettering. Buckle in.
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