Marveling at Leeds

LEEDS, England — As schoolgirls, we learned about onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they mean, with dramatic examples: “Clang, bat

tle-ax, clash.” In the Royal Armories Museum in Leeds, the capital of Yorkshire, that phrase rings silently in every ear.

The Royal Armories is the oldest museum in Britain, where not only are armor and weapons transformed into objects of beauty, but the clang and clash of jousters on horseback can be heard and seen in regular demonstrations.

Britain, with its familiar language and comfortable customs, is often the first foreign destination for Americans. If you happen to be traveling with children between the ages of 6 and 16, England can be a place of mystery and marvel, stimulating minds young and old, where history and literature come alive. Not just in London.

Leeds is Yorkshire’s largest city, a delightful, lively university town. Founded almost 2,000 years ago by the Romans, it became the region’s most important wool manufacturing town in the Middle Ages, when it took the Golden Fleece as its coat of arms.

Perhaps the unique and most fascinating place here is the Royal Armories Museum; it’s exciting historically and aesthetically. According to the fourth-century “The Art of War,” “Military action is important to the nation — it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction, so it is important to examine it.” The Royal Armories Museum does that in a rather non-war-like manner.

The museum began as the royal and national arsenal housed in the Tower of London. Its focus changed in the 19th century from displays of curiosities to historically accurate exhibitions designed to improve a visitor’s knowledge of the past. Today, it has three sites — London, with arms relating directly to the history of the Tower; Portsmouth, where the collection of artillery is displayed; and Leeds, developed specifically to show the collection of the Royal Armories in the best possible way.

The Leeds branch, open since 1995, is a real treat for both young people and grown-ups. As you enter the museum, you see the symbol of the museum, an abstract replica of a striking horned helmet, presented to Henry VIII by the Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 16th century. What makes it extraordinary is its uncanny resemblance to Mesoamerican masks. The original is on display inside the museum along with displays of wonderful, ornate suits of armor and horse armor.

A visitor is greeted by the stunning Hall of Steel, a tower displaying rows of 17th-century breastplates and 19th-century military equipment, such as muskets, pistols, swords and bayonets. Polished and shining, these lethal instruments of destruction look like a brilliant collage on the octagonal tower, reaching up three floors from the ground to the roof.

Perhaps the most unusual item in the museum’s collection is late-16th-century Indian elephant armor, which looks like an enormous metal patchwork quilt. The Oriental section, which includes armor from Turkey, Central Asia, India and Japan, is filled with objects both beautiful and deadly.

The museum has four floors of displays, films and educational areas, but the real clang and clash can be heard outside in the Tilt Yard, along the River Aire, where, weather permitting, exhibitions of military and sporting skill at arms, including jousting, are put on throughout the summer. Cavalry skills, fencing, chariot racing, archery, martial arts, archery on horseback and, of course, jousting tournaments take place. In several events, such as archery and fencing, visitors as young as 6 and 8 can take part.

A covered Victorian shopping arcade in the center of town has an old market selling all sorts of goods, including fruits and vegetables. The town is studded with elegant Victorian buildings.

The City Art Gallery houses a good collection of 20th-century art. Next door is the Henry Moore Institute, named for the great sculptor, a native Yorkshireman. The center displays sculpture and also is a research and study center.

Leeds has no shortage of restaurants and coffee shops, all of them filled with students and young trendies having a good time.

Just 26 miles away is the city of York, birthplace of Guy Fawkes in 1570 and the site of more medieval torture and beheadings than any other city in Britain except London. It is said to be haunted, and ghost walks are held every evening for adults and children. York’s magnificent cathedral alone is worth the visit, and the city has a lively rock music scene.

A short train ride from Leeds into the Yorkshire moors and hills takes you into Bronte country. En route, visit the Museum of Rail Travel at the Ingrow Railway Centre near Keighley. The little museum has a collection of old carriages and locomotives, some of which can be visited. The museum’s relics shop sells out-of-print transport magazines and books and such items as cast-iron railway signs and guards’ lamps.

The short ride on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is a great way to get to the village of Haworth, where the Brontes lived and worked. The K&WVR is a standard-gauge branch line that joins British Rail, the national network, at Keighley and runs five miles up the Worth Valley. The railway has six beautifully restored stations and more than 30 steam locomotives, heritage diesel engines and restored vintage carriages.

The steam train used in the 1970 film “Railway Children” takes visitors to Haworth. Two circular walks, sponsored by the city of Bradford, lead to the various locations portrayed in the film. Chris Bates, a one-time journalist who serves as a volunteer conductor, looks and acts his part as though he were playing a role in a movie.

The Keighley station includes a platform used in countless films of the early 20th century and retains many of the station’s original features, including a cast-iron canopy, waiting room and stone tower with cast-iron water tank. Flowering baskets hang from the canopy.

Haworth is the charming village up on the Pennine Moor where the Bronte sisters — Charlotte, Emily and Anne — and their brother, Branwell, lived with their father in the village parsonage, beginning in 1820. Patrick Bronte, who changed his name from Prunty or Brunty in imitation of Lord Horatio Nelson, had become the Duke of Bronte.

The parsonage is one of the most visited literary shrines in England, second only to Stratford-Upon-Avon. It has been turned into a museum containing some Bronte furniture as well as pictures, books and manuscripts. It contains the rectangular table at which the sisters wrote their splendid Victorian novels. “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Agnes Grey” come alive in the small house next to the church and tree-studded cemetery, where the Brontes lived out their short lives.

A one-hour graveyard tour on Saturday nights in spring and autumn is designed “to explore by lanternlight the graveyard believed to house the remains of almost 40,000 souls.”

During the summer months, the tour is a Ghost and Graveyard Tour without lanterns.

A ruined farmhouse, Top Withens, lies three miles outside the town, and this is thought to have been the inspiration for “Wuthering Heights.” It takes little imagination to visualize Cathy and Heathcliff — or is it Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier? — on this isolated wind-swept spot with the sun shining on the purple heather.

Haworth has some amusing shops on its steep main street — one is a marvelous old apothecary shop, Rose & Co., that sells everything from white linen dresses to aids to avoiding flatulence. It was here that Branwell went for his supply of the opium to which he was addicted.

The White Lion hotel and pub is believed to be haunted by Lily Cove, Britain’s first female balloonist and parachutist, who fell to her death in Haworth at the beginning of the 20th century. She was laid out in the White Lion and is said to revisit the inn every June 10, the anniversary of her death.

The Weavers restaurant down the street is said similarly to be haunted by a woman in gray who first appeared 30 years ago at the rear door on a Saturday night. She has moved among the tables three times in 30 years on Dec. 18, the anniversary of her death, and she is always honored on that night whether she appears or not.

The restaurant is named for the 18th-century weavers’ cottages lining the street. The cottages are recognizable by the large casements on the upper floors that served as the workrooms. Two families lived in each house — the weavers upstairs and the wool combers below. When the Brontes lived in Haworth, there were about 400 weavers in the village. At one time, Haworth wove more wool than any Yorkshire village.

On the way back to Leeds, stop at the extraordinary town and mill of Saltaire, built between 1851 and 1876 by wool baron Sir Titus Salt on the banks of the River Aire.

Sir Titus wanted to create a healthy environment for the millworkers, who lived in crowded, unsanitary conditions in the nearby towns of Bradford and Leeds. His model village for the 4,500 workers who came with him consisted of 22 streets, 775 houses and 45 almshouses as well as the great mill.

His state-of-the-art mill powered 1,200 looms capable of producing 30,000 yards of cloth per day. There were two churches for Sunday worship, a hospital, shops and a school for workers’ children.

The dark price paid for this utopia was his total control of the work force. Employees were forbidden to gather together to preclude the possibility of forming any kind of union; they were not allowed to leave Saltaire without permission; and their comings and goings within the village were monitored closely.

Eventually, recession caught up with Sir Titus; he ceased trading in 1892, leaving his village to stand idle and fall victim to vandalism. Like the Sleeping Beauty of fairy tales, Saltaire slept for 100 years until an entrepreneur from Leeds, Jonathan Silver, restored the mill to its former splendor. Today, middle-class residents fill the neat little houses, and the town has its share of cafes and small shops.

The mill itself has been converted into a gallery to house the works of artist David Hockney, who was born in Bradford. Mr. Hockney’s delightful paintings and watercolors are a pleasure to see and alone are worth the trip to Saltaire.

Just before you get back to Leeds, you’ll see a magnificent ruined 12th-century Cistercian abbey by the road. Open to the sky, with crumbling walls and secret corners, Kirkstall Abbey is a grand place for a picnic, a quick game of hide-and-seek, or a stop to rest and watch the sun set on the glorious English trees and green grass. In the summer, the abbey serves as a scenic backdrop for fireworks displays, Shakespearean comedies and the annual Kirkstall Village Festival.

From Leeds, it’s a pleasant three-hour rail trip through the northern England countryside to Edinburgh, the capital and cultural center of Scotland and the birthplace of such luminaries as Alexander Graham Bell, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Charlotte Bronte once wrote that Edinburgh is to London as poetry is to prose. If Edinburgh is poetry, it’s an epic, not a sonnet. This splendid city built of gray stone sits magnificently on seven hills, with Edinburgh Castle, the heart of Scotland, towering on the craggy top. The beaches, fields, hills, castles and historic homes around Edinburgh are called the Lothians.

Edinburgh has been inhabited since 850 B.C. By the 12th century, it had become a walled town perched on the hill. The oldest extant building probably is the lovely little Norman St. Margaret’s Chapel, built around 1090 in the middle of the castle.

From the castle, there’s a fabulous view of the city and the surrounding countryside down to the Firth of Forth, an inlet of the North Sea.

The castle consists of a series of buildings, and young visitors can admire the huge Belgian cannon, named Mons Meg; the crown jewels; and the bedchamber where Mary Stuart gave birth to James VI, who later became James I of England. Since the 1870s, there has been a cemetery within the castle walls for soldiers’ dogs.

A gun sounds daily at 1 p.m. to remind Edinburghers to set their watches. A sculpture by Meredyth Williams honors the soldiers who died in World War I. Each regiment, and its animals, is represented.

The road from the castle down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse is known as the Royal Mile. Holyrood was the palace of Mary and today is the official residence of Queen Elizabeth II when she comes to Scotland. It’s open to the public when the royal family is not in residence.

The road goes through the Old Town with its warren of narrow closes, or alleys, and medieval houses branching off on either side. During the Middle Ages, the houses built on a close were 12 stories high.

The wealthy lived on the middle floors; the poor below in darkness and squalor and above in danger and cold. The close was dark and only a few feet wide. A few remain (with just six rather than 12 stories), and some can be visited. It is easy to imagine how the plague must have run like wildfire through those miserable dwellings.

A bronze plaque on the Royal Mile commemorates the spot where witches were burned in the 16th century. A slightly ghoulish nighttime tour visits the places in the Old Town where burnings, executions and the like took place. It’s conducted by costumed performers and will frighten only the very youngest.

What once was a lake at the bottom of Castle Hill has been turned into a flower-filled garden, separating the old from the new town. The graceful 18th-century new town is filled with beautiful squares, classical facades, wide streets and elegant houses as well as fine shops and excellent hotels.

Every August, Edinburgh hosts a great festival of theater, art, dance, books and music. The Royal Tattoo, a celebration of music, dance and drama, is performed during the festival by the Massed Pipes and Drums, the Massed Military Band and various invited bands against the backdrop of the castle. Dozens of events each day include street performances throughout both old and new towns, and events for children, young adults and seasoned theatergoers. It’s a festival not to be missed.

Young visitors will appreciate the royal yacht Britannia, which transported the royal family more than a million miles around the world. Prince Charles and Princess Diana honeymooned aboard the Britannia; since 1998, it has been moored at Leith, Edinburgh’s harbor.

The self-guided tour of the yacht gives a glimpse of how the royals lived when they visited countries around the Mediterranean and across the oceans. Low-key living quarters contrast with elegant drawing rooms and a table set for two dozen with crystal, china and silver. The admiral’s and the crew’s quarters, the infirmary and the gleaming boiler room are accessible to visitors.

Edinburgh is about four hours from London by train, about an hour by plane. It’s also a good jumping-off place for visits to the Scottish moors, castles, towns and lochs. The Scottish Tourist Board organizes one-day Highland minibus tours for anyone without enough time to wander leisurely though Scotland.

The wonder and delight of Britain is that history, beauty, mystery, art and antiquity lurk around every bend in the road, as do good food, cozy villages and friendly people. And everyone — well, almost everyone — speaks English.

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From Washington-area airports, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and United Airlines fly nonstop to London’s Heathrow Airport.

In Britain, British Rail is excellent and crisscrosses the country from Penzance at Land’s End in Cornwall to Thurso in the very north of Scotland. BritRail discount tickets are available for advance purchase in the United States. For information, log on to www.britrail.net or call BritRail, 877/677-1066.

The Leeds Tourist Information Centre’s Web site is www.leeds.gov.uk; for information on the Royal Armories Museum, visit www.armouries.org.uk.