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, he later worked as a railway clerk before taking up full-time painting. Following success, a move in the 1860s to Headingley would inspire 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.