Burmantofts is an area of 1960s high-rise housing blocks in inner-city east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England adjacent to the city centre and St. James's Hospital.
It seems to have been coined in the Middle English period, from the words burghman ('burgher, town-dweller, burgess', from burgh 'town' and man 'person') and toft ('plot of land'.
[3] The burghers from whom Burmantofts takes its name pursued craft businesses in the town, and grew crops on their tofts, such as grain which would be processed at the nearby mill on what is now Miles Hill.
[4] It was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield and coal mines and clay extraction led to works making bricks and earthenware.
[6] The area was also home to some textile industry and in 1921, Montague Burton began to develop a site on Hudson Road which eventually became the biggest clothing factory in the world.
It is a Gothic Revival building with stone walls and slate roof, designed by Leeds architects John Kelly and Edward Birchall.
By the 1960s, neighbouring Lincoln Green was seeing many new high rise council flats being erected, however it did not take long for Burmantofts to catch up and by the mid-1960s most of the blocks that stand today had been completed.
The proposed Leeds Supertram Eastern line was supposed to run in-between Burmantofts and Harehills, however the future of this scheme is uncertain.
[14] Burmantofts is in most parts less than a mile from the Eastern fringes of Leeds city centre providing it with many other amenities close by.
Burmantofts amateur boxing club are based in parts of the former Burtons factory, on the corner of Hudson Road and Stoney Rock Lane.