Stalking the Access Bus
Photos by Lizzie Coombes
Matthew: I guess we all carry our own version of the city inside us.
Over the last few weeks we’ve been gathering stories from the women of the Seacroft Ladies Fellowship – a group that meets once a week at Seacroft Methodist Chapel. It’s predominantly an older group, with those attending ranging in age from mid-sixties to mid-nineties. Although it takes place at the chapel, the meetings are mainly social – an opportunity to chat and catch up, to share news and gossip and perhaps to hear an invited speaker. The women who attend are all based locally – although many of them have lived in other places. One lady has lived everywhere from Devon to Singapore, having followed her Army husband around the country and the world. Others have spent their whole lives in the Seacroft area.
Last week, we organised a talk for them, about Women’s Suffrage. It focused on the life of Leonora Cohen, a Leeds based suffragette and activist who spent her life campaigning for Women’s Rights. Famously, she once smashed a glass case in the Tower of London with an iron bar to draw attention to her cause. Leonora’s story certainly seemed to strike a chord with the women of the Fellowship. Many of them applauded as an account of her trial for smashing the jewel case was read out, while at the end of the talk, one of them thumped the air and called out, “Votes for Women!”
After the session, Alison and I went on a journey. In Alison’s car, we stalked the access bus that brings the members to the chapel. All of them live close by but it takes around an hour for the bus to make its way through the warren of streets that make up the Seacroft estate. Many of the Fellowship live alone and whilst they all have other interests, the meetings are an important part of their week – bringing them together with friends and contemporaries, providing a sense of community and offering a shared experience. Many of them have trouble walking and if it weren’t for the bus, it’s likely that a lot of them wouldn’t be able to attend.
As we follow the bus through the streets in the car, stopping by houses and outside blocks of flats, I follow the route we are taking with my fingernail, tracing our progress on Alison’s A-Z. It isn’t a journey that I’ve thought about before. I remember talking to one of the ladies, Mary, about the new Trinity Shopping Centre. “I haven’t seen it,” she said. “This is where I go shopping. I can’t remember the last time I went into town. I don’t like the sound of it. It’s not the Leeds that I remember.”
I guess we all carry our own version of the city inside us. They might not have vandalised the Tower of London, but each of the women at the fellowship has led an extraordinary life – unique and unliveable by anybody else. But the Leeds that they lived their lives in has vanished now. Places they remember are no longer there. The city has been rebuilt around them and no longer looks like the place they once knew. The map of Leeds has not been drawn for them. This is the route that is important now – this tangled journey around the houses – the line I trace, an invisible thread that binds them all together.
