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In the late 18th Century (1751 to 1772) britain was gripped by what was called turnpike mania, with turnpike trusts and roads popping up at an increasinging rate. The canals were proving too slow and unreliable for the booming industrial revolution, and bankers had discovered there was money to be made from building or improving roads and then charging for their use.

Two roads competed for the lucrative Leeds to Bradford route, and were effectively built in a race to win the traffic.
One route ran from North of the river along the current A65 road to Kirkstall, where it crossed the bridge and headed up towards Rodley. This road at Kirkstall would later became a minor intersection as the road from Kirkstall to Burley in Wharfedale was built in 1827, causing a furore as it drove straight through the ground of Kirkstall Abbey.
The second route ran from south of the river, and though more hilly was also more direct, heading up through Armley and Stanningley.

During this period, roads were still built using Telford's methods, with carefully laid slabs of cut stone rather than the later approach of packing down chippings as pioneered by McAdam, so this was especially hard labour.

During the summer the long hours spent working on roads led to a characteristic look for these workers or "navvies" of bright pink shoulders from the sun, a white band around their waist where frequent bending kept it relatively shaded, and then generally black from about the waist down. Large groups of navvies were easily identifiable from these pink white and black bands and could often be seen gathered in cafes guzzling drinks and eating large amounts, often preferring sugary cakes and the like.

One particular incident during the building of these two competing Leeds to Bradford Roads led to the treasurers (the Bradford banking firm of C. H. and A. Harris) of the more Northerly (Kirkstall) route the Bradford to abandon their hope of completing the route and cancelling the road altogether, leaving it only completed as far as Calverley, though this was later (1804) extended to Shipley.

As a result of turnpike mania, the semi skilled navvies were never short of work, and could walk out of one job, chopping up their contracts with their shovel, and start on another within the hour, this led to the phrase "chopping and changing" still used today. Competing wages between the two Leeds-Bradford projects, and difficult working conditions combined with the financiers' pressure to be ahead often led to navvies packing their tools and wandering between these two sites. Some workers were even known to do this multiple times in one day, and for this earnt the dubious title among their colleagues of being "A Chopper".

Some of the workers started their own informal union, known as the "Federation of Turnpike Roadmen" or FTR, and though this never really gained widespread popularity, it was more popular than other such groups, one of which coud only be joined by a secretive invitation process, and required its members to dress in red from head to toe at all times.

Over time, the navvies walking between sites became so frequent that a track was formed up and down the hill just west of Armley, and whenever this route became difficult due to soft mud or exposed rocks, the navvies would improve the track until it became almost as good as the roads they were working on.

With their ragged trousers, stiffened by weeks or months of road dust and worn short at the ankle, in summer often ripped away at the knee, the navvies were dubbed "Cork Shorts", and this road between the two sites soon became known locally as "Cork Short Lane".

After responsibility for the management of roads had been assigned to the Local Authority in the Local Government act of 1888, in 1905 Leeds City Council employed Mr A.L. Barosa as Senior Clerk of Highways, a flamboyant Italian from New York where his family still run a famous restaurant, partly to ensure the newly introduced trams would operate smoothly and not disrupt road traffic excessively, but also as the network of roads around Leeds became busier with road traffic.

Barosa wasn't particularly interested in trams, and preferred to spend his days riding around on his donkey named "Dogma" followed by a small team consisting of a carpenter, and two signwriters, demanding increasingly extravagant road signs be built, painted and mounted high on the walls of prominent buildings (usually without seeking the owners' permission) as he looked on from Dogma's saddle.

It's believed that either A.L. Barosa's mis-pronunciation of "Cork Short Lane" due to his strong accent, or a childish joke by his team led to a corruption to the current name of "Cockshot Lane".

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Jamie T

SOTW iPhone (cropped): Cork Short Lane - Up

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