The burghers from whom Burmantofts takes its name pursued craft businesses in the town, and grew crops on their tofts, such as grain which would be processed at the nearby mill on what is now
Miles Hill. It was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield and coal mines and clay extraction led to works making bricks and earthenware. Notably in 1842 Lassey and Wilcock acquired 100 acres north of Nippet Lane, and found they were able to extract both coal and clay from the same mine and became coal sellers and brickmakers. In 1870 this became Wilcock and Co also selling drainage pipes, though this only occupied 4 acres, the rest being farmland. Further development of the site and of newer products led to Burmantofts Pottery, which was made there until 1957. In 1878, Burmantofts was the site of Leeds' first municipal waste incinerator, making use of a former industrial chimney. The area was also home to some textile industry and in 1921,
Montague Burton began to develop a site on Hudson Road which eventually became the biggest clothing factory in the world. After the
Second World War Burmantofts was in a very poor condition, however redevelopment did not occur for sometime. While the area was dilapidated and buildings such as the Pineapple Hotel (no 77 Accommodation Road) stood derelict for many years throughout the 1930s and 1940s, no real redevelopment started until the mid-1950s, most of this however was just demolition and in this time only a handful of houses were built around Torre Road and Lupton Avenue. In 1960 the site of Burmantofts Pottery was acquired by the Leeds Corporation and used for housing and the Shakespeare school.
St Agnes' parish church The only historic building in the area is St Agnes' United Church, the
Church of England parish church on Stoney Rock Lane. It is a
Gothic Revival building with stone walls and slate roof, designed by Leeds architects John Kelly and Edward Birchall. The foundation stone was laid on 9 July 1887 and the completed church was consecrated by the Bishop of Ripon on 20 May 1889. It was made the parish church in the 1930s when the church of St Stephen (built 1851) was demolished. The west window stained glass in St Agnes' was originally in St Stephen's. The church has a
reredos of
Burmantofts faience Housing There was relatively little housing in Burmantofts until the 20th century: just a few low-rent houses built amongst the mills. Most of the workers in Burmantofts would have lived in nearby areas such as
Harehills, however redevelopment through the 1950s and 1960s brought high density living to Burmantofts and it is this redevelopment that has shaped modern Burmantofts. By the 1960s, neighbouring
Lincoln Green was seeing many new high rise council flats being erected, however it did not take long for Burmantofts to catch up and by the mid-1960s most of the blocks that stand today had been completed. Burmantofts as it is known today was completed around the early 1970s, since then changes in the area have been few and far between. Burmantofts has changed very little in the last forty years, the only area of change is a St James' Hospital, which separated Harehills and Burmantofts. St Bridgets Roman Catholic Secondary Modern School on Torre Road closed down in the 1980s and is now St. Patrick's Primary School, while the transport depot opposite is now the site of Benfield
Ford. In September 2006, the area's main secondary school, Primrose High School moved into new premises. With regards to housing, Leeds City Council has not proposed any regeneration in the area, and in recent years is focusing on areas of early-20th century
back-to-back housing such as
Beeston and
Holbeck. There has however been refurbishment of a number of blocks. At present the majority of the housing in Burmantofts is mid-20th century council-owned housing, mostly made up by multi-story blocks of flats of various heights. A small number of 19th century houses remain close to the Burtons warehouse. In Leeds, the Inner East sub-area (which includes Burmantofts and Richmond Hill) had among the lowest house prices in the city in 2022. ==Population==