Beeston is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England located on a hill about 2 miles (3 km) south of the city centre.

The Middle English word flat meant 'piece of level ground, field', but the precise significance of 'cross' is unclear.

[4] Beeston is first mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book, when it had recently been granted to Ilbert de Lacy (1045–93); in 1066 it had been worth 40 shillings (£2), but in 1086 it was considered waste, presumably because of the Harrying of the North.

[6] Parts of Stank Hall Barn, a grade II* listed scheduled ancient monument originally built for the storage of crops, have been dated to between 1448 and 1490.

[5] According to David Thornton, in December 1688 rumours abounded in the town [of Leeds] that an army of Roman Catholics were ravaging the surrounding area.

The drums beat, the bells rang backward, the women shrieked, and some doleful consternation seized upon all persons ... (B)lessed be God!

Indicators for health, economic activity and community safety in this area are broadly consistent with averages for the City of Leeds as a whole.

[15] In April 2008, a £93 million PFI scheme to build 700 private and housing association dwellings and regenerate some existing stock was announced.

Beeston Hill has a relatively high level of empty housing as well as a number of significant unoccupied commercial premises.

[15] The area suffers from a high level of deprivation, with indicators for health, economic activity and community safety substantially worse than for the City of Leeds as a whole.

Services between Leeds and Huddersfield are operated by TransPennine Express, stopping at Morley, Batley, Dewsbury, Ravensthorpe, Mirfield and Deighton.

However, there are substantial areas of industrial and commercial development around Elland Road and to the south of Dewsbury Road and Beeston is surrounded by areas which have become popular with businesses, such as Leeds city centre, Tingley and many of the business districts along the south side of the River Aire.

[23] The park has a large multi-use games area which includes five-a-side football pitches, basketball courts and tennis courts, while the park boasts an artificial cricket pitch, a children's play area and outdoor gym equipment.

The park is the venue for the Beeston Festival which takes place annually in June, and in summer and school holidays is host to numerous activities for young people.

The park hosts a weekly 5 km Parkrun every Saturday morning at 9am, over 1,000 runners have taken part in the event since it began on 30 March 2013.

Henry Rowland Marsden, the Victorian industrialist and former mayor of Leeds, is buried in Holbeck Cemetery where his family grave is marked by a Grade II-listed memorial.

[24] The poem "V" by Tony Harrison, published in 1985, describes a visit to Holbeck Cemetery and his reaction to finding his parents' tombstones vandalised.

The more modern church of St David Waincliffe on Dewsbury Road, constructed in the 1960s was designed by Geoffrey Davy[26] and won a Hoffman Wood (Leeds) Gold Medal for Architecture.

Parts of Beeston Hill to the north of Cross Flatts Park are located within the Hunslet and Riverside ward.

Before the 1997 general election, Beeston was part of the Morley and Leeds South constituency, represented from its creation in 1983 to 1992 by Merlyn Rees and from 1992 to 1997 by John Gunnell.

[28][29] The playwright Willis Hall attended Cockburn High School in Beeston[30] as did the academic and author of The Uses of Literacy, Richard Hoggart.

[31] The poet Tony Harrison was brought up on Tempest Road and went to what was then Cross Flatts county primary school.

[32] More recently, the actress Holly Kenny who starred in the BBC drama serial Waterloo Road was a pupil at the school.

The musician and bandleader Ivy Benson grew up in Beeston, where her former house on Cemetery Road is marked with a blue plaque.

[36] Beeston was the focus of press attention following 7 July 2005 London bombings when it was revealed that two of the four bombers had lived in the area.

Setting the scene, it also said "Peeping from lacy curtains in red-brick rowhouses, tattooed white men, turbaned Sikhs and olive-skinned women in gauzy headscarves shared what they knew.

The paper also said "It is a poor and racially mixed neighbourhood of back-to-back row houses with a population of just a few thousand where successive waves of immigrants from Asia in the 1960s, and now from East Europe and Africa, have spread a tangled overlay on a cityscape forged in Victorian Britain.

The bright pink and turquoise saris of Asian women offer chromatic relief from drab brick homes".