Pub history

The Golden Beam

John Atkinson Grimshaw, famous for his moonlit and colourful urban landscapes, is regarded as ‘one of the great painters of the Victorian era’. Born in 1836 in a back street of Leeds, Grimshaw later worked as a railway clerk before taking up full-time painting. Success enabled the young artist and his wife to move to Headingley. There is a blue plaque on the front of the house in Cliff Road where they lived during the 1860s. This well-to-do suburb inspired Grimshaw to paint the moonlit view entitled ‘A Lane in Headingley, Leeds’ and also ‘A Golden Beam’, depicting a grand house on a leafy suburban lane in the last of the evening light.