Yorkshire teacher who researched history of her 19th-century weaver's cottage finds links to artists' commune and bohemian revolution

Vivien Strachan studied the title deeds to Lombard House, which was built in around 1850 as part of a row of cottage workshops for self-employed weavers. The property still has the loom shop with large windows where the artisans would have worked in the 19th century, when Little London, the self-contained enclave in Rawdon, between Leeds and Bradford, was a centre for the industry.

The first half of the 20th century saw the connections to textiles continue, with occupants including mill hands, a motor engineer and a yarn tester who became a woollen merchant until the 1950s, when Lombard House was sold to Peter Alexander, a philosopher at the University of Leeds.

A name that caught her eye was Maurice de Sausmarez, who bought Lombard House from the Alexanders and lived there for an eventful two years. He was the man behind The Leeds Experiment, a movement based in the city that changed art education and the way the subject was taught. Some of Britain’s most innovative artists came to Leeds to teach and ‘rip up the rule book’.

De Sausmarez taught Bridget Riley and inventor Sir James Dyson, and counted Henry Moore and David Hockney as friends. He was joined in the bohemian enclave in what was still a rundown area by Eric and Muriel Atkinson, the abstract artist and his wife who ran Bretton Hall’s art department, and renowned international architect David Lewis.

De Sausmarez, who died in 1969, founded the university’s fine art department and painted Whitelock’s Ale House, a known haunt of movers and shakers. He moved to Little London from Headingley, where he had a large home, but perhaps sought somewhere spacious in what was then a cheaper neighbourhood. He suffered serious illness during his time on Lombard Street and his marriage ended before he left to take up a post in London.

He sold the house in 1959 to the Atkinsons, when Eric had been appointed director of Leeds College of Art, which he likened to The Beatles’ music and British fashion in terms of its reputation. They couple lived there for a decade, entertaining avidly and drinking at local pub The Princess.

Muriel, now widowed, told Vivien: “What attracted us to the house? It was spacious, solidly built and affordable, and had the potential for a large studio. At that time it was well nigh impossible to get a mortgage on property over a certain age but we were fortunate to have friends who helped us.”

David Lewis was fed up with his ‘pathetic’ apartment in Chapel Allerton when he bought an old warehouse two doors down from the Atkinsons for just £700. He set about starting a commune and moved fellow architecture students into the former cloth mill, which had been a dubious ‘men’s club’ in the 1920s. They bought their sweets from two elderly sisters who ran Little London’s post office, and travelled to Leeds en masse in an old van for classes.

The cottages on the weavers’ row were still considered slums at this point, but the artists were able to take advantage of improvement grants in the 1950s to modernise them.

Vivien said: “The airy top floor of Lombard House, this former loom shop, still feels like a workshop today. Light was a requirement of weavers to see cloth clearly, and most weavers’ cottages had large windows.”

The movement eventually burned itself out in 1969 and the bohemian era in Little London’s history drew to a close when the Atkinsons sold Lombard House to an exporter. The commune passed into the ownership of Scottish publishing family the Wolfe Murrays; one resident, Gus, was a Yorkshire Post editor.

Vivien added: “De Sausmarez, Atkinson and Lewis were influential as artists, designers and educators but were also colleagues, drinking partners and friends. Remembered for their intellectual curiosity, their passion and their bonhomie, all three lived into their nineties and remain vital forces. Still connected

to Lombard Street by their art and through the stone walls, weathered slabs and rich landscapes of the Aire Valley. Across collective and individual memory their imprint has been huge. The seismic impact they made on a generation of young artists reverberates to this day.”