Buslingthorpe is an area of

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It is about one mile north of the city centre and currently falls within the Hyde Park and Woodhouse ward of the City of Leeds Council. Much of the housing in the area was demolished by

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low-income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

in the 1950s.

Etymology

The name of Buslingthorpe is first attested in 1258 as ''Buselingtorpe''. It is possible that the place borrowed its name from Buslingthorpe in

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...

, but thought more likely that the two names were coined independently, from the

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

personal name ''Buselin'' and the word ''thorpe'' ('secondary settlement, outlying farmstead', itself borrowed into English from Old Norse ''þorp''). Thus the name ''Buslingthorpe'' originally meant 'Buselin's farmstead'. A writer in ''Notes and Queries'' in 1932 noted that Buslingthorpe (shared with the Lincolnshire Buslingthorpe and

Buckfastleigh Buckfastleigh is a market town and civil parish in Devon, England situated beside the Devon Expressway ( A38) at the edge of the Dartmoor National Park. It is part of Teignbridge and, for ecclesiastical purposes, lies within the Totnes Deanery. ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

) contains 13 different letters, exactly half the alphabet, none repeated and with no hyphenation. The writer wondered if it was unique. The same question was raised earlier in

Strand Magazine ''The Strand Magazine'' was a monthly British magazine founded by George Newnes, composed of short fiction and general interest articles. It was published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950, running to 711 issues, though the ...

in 1921. In 2007

David Crystal David Crystal, (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist who works on the linguistics of the English language. Crystal studied English at University College London and has lectured at Bangor University and the University of Reading. He was aw ...

noted that Bricklehampton surpasses this with 14 unique letters. Buslingthorpe's recreation ground was named Norma Hutchinson Park in 2009 to commemorate

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

n-born councillor Norma Hutchinson who died in 2004.

History

Buslingthorpe was an ecclesiastical parish from 1849 to 1955. Between 1870 and 1872, it was a chapelry in the parish of Leeds, with a population of 4,548 living in 998 houses. The Church of St Michael was built in 1852–1854 on Buslingthorpe Lane and demolished in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The architect was O. W. Burleigh, of Leeds.

References

External links

* Places in Leeds {{WestYorkshire-geo-stub