Experience Leeds city centre early on a midsummer morning & muse on the past, present and future before sharing breakfast

An engaging meditation on pace & pulse, continuity & change, minutes & millennia, geology & fashion, founding & dissolution, speeding up & slowing down, starting & finishing, memory & imagination.

As a geographer, I'm endlessly interested in the long-term development of cities – past, present (what makes the place tick?), future.

I’ll draw attention to many elements of the city:

its clocks and bells

buildings old and new and how we can tell their age

features that aim to speed up and slow down our economic and personal lives

names both famous and less well known who can be linked to these themes

Start near Leeds Minster (exact spot: https://what3words.com/museum.launch.choice) and finish in Millennium Square.

Above: Potts 'turret clocks' were added to Leeds Minster in the 1890s - made in Potts' works a short walk from here. For centuries, church bells alone had marked the passing hours. Clock faces were a relatively late addition.

Why is 'clockwise' the way it is and not in the other direction?

Below: a Potts clock specially made for the Victorian rebuild of the Griffin Hotel on Boar Lane.

Description supplied by the event organiser.