Wellington Street in Leeds

 

The door surround at Blemann House

The highlight of my short walk along the River Aire from Whitehall Bridge to City Square was the discovery of the Dark Arches (1869) which, together with other vaults built for the Midland Railway's Wellington Station (1846), form an integral part of Leeds railway station and underlie the Queens Hotel, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company offices and the concourse. 

 

A Photo Challenge for the western part of Leeds city centre

 

For the rest of the day, my plan was to continue my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge in the west part of the Leeds City Centre Conservation Area, which has the Georgian Park Square at its centre; however, most of the C18 buildings had already been photographed and the 28 buildings on my list are spread around the area between Wellington Street and Great George Street. 

 

A map of the Leeds City Centre Conservation Area

 

Heading up Wellington Street past the mid C19 multi-storey former woollen warehouse buildings - Churchill House and No. 19 - which Historic England (HE) think are probably by George Corson, the Leeds based Scottish architect whose work I had seen at the former Parochial Institute in Headingley, during my last trip to Leeds. 

 

Blemann House and Nos. 1 and 3 King Street

 

HE also attribute Nos. 1 and 3 King Street (1861), which includes No. 52 Wellington Street and Blemann House (1870) to Corson, but to my eye they look like they have been built with the same design and in a single phase. 

 

The front elevation of No. 52

 

Although functional buildings that were built in close proximity to the Leeds railway stations, their Venetian style design with fine architectural detailing and materials reflect the prosperity of the textile industry - a feature of other West Yorkshire towns such as Dewsbury and Huddersfield.

 

Coarse grained Rough Rock used for the boundary wall and basement

Coarse grained and pebbly Rough Rock is used for the basement dressings and boundary walls, with a yellowish massive, medium grained sandstone for the rusticated door and ground floor window surrounds and polychrome brickwork for the upper storeys. 

 

Rough Rock used for the entrance to No. 52

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which was fully operational in Leeds by 1777, connected with the renowned Bolton Woods quarries that supplied the massive variety of the Elland Flags, which had been used in Leeds Town Hall (1858) and the railway network now linked to the East Midlands. 

 

The entrance to Blemann House

 

The entrance to Blemann House (No. 54 Wellington Sreet) has columns made of a dull red sandstone that I immediately presumed to be Red Mansfield stone, a sandy variety of the Permian Cadeby Formation that was widely exported from Mansfield to other cities in England, once it was connected to the railways. 

 

The former Great Northern Railway Station Hotel

 

The former Great Northern Railway Station Hotel (1869) occupies the corner of Wellington Street and Thirsk Row, but it is not a listed building despite its place in the railway history of Leeds and its fine architectural features, which include carved figures holding a shield on the corners of the Wellington Street elevation. 

 

A figure on the Great Northern Railway Station Hotel

 

I didn’t look very closely at the sandstone ashlar masonry used for the ground and first floor but, when enlarging my photos, I think that its massive nature and the finely carved details make it more likely to be another example of Bolton Woods stone than the Rough Rock or the locally quarried Elland Flags. 

 

No. 56 Wellington Street

The Gothic Revival style No. 56 Wellington Street (1873) by Henry Walker is listed by HE as offices, but an illustration in the Building News describes it as a leather warehouse being built in local sandstone. I only photographed this from the opposite side of the street, but this appears to be Rough Rock and not the Elland Flags. 

 

Nos. 54 (R) and 56 (L) Wellington Street

Although not part of my Photo Challenge, the adjoining Waterloo House is another warehouse, designed by the architect Edward Birchall for the cloth manufacturer Walter Stead. The scaffolding prevented me from seeing the details of the ground floor, particularly the pink granite columns to the entrance, but the polychrome brickwork and stone dressings could clearly be seen. 

 

No. 58 Wellington Street

 

Continuing along the south side of Wellington Street, where the site of the Leeds Central railway station and its associated goods sheds and sidings are now occupied by vast office blocks, I stopped to photograph the Centura office building on the north side. 

 

The entrance to the Centura office building

 

Here, the surrounds to the entrance and expanses of windows that stand proud of the red facing bricks are made with a distinctly pink sandstone that looks like one of the coarse grained sandstones from the Corbar Grit along the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire – such as Peak Moor, Hall Dale, Watts Cliff and Dukes. 

 

The entrance to Apsley House

 

Occupying the corner with Queen Street is Apsley House (1903), by George Corson and W. Evans Jones and Perkin and Bulmer acting as associated architects. The latter were advocates of Burmantoft’s ‘Marmo’ white faience, including the Royal Bank of Scotland (1909) on Park Row and Atlas House (1910) on King Street, which might explain the extensive use of pink terracotta for the main doorway and dressings.

 

A general view of Apsley House

Whitehall Bridge to City Square in Leeds

 

A view west along the River Aire

It took me 1¾ hours to explore Granary Wharf and Holbeck Urban Village and take photographs of the 19 buildings for my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. With 28 more buildings to photograph on my day out, I quickly headed west along the towpath of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal until I reached Whitehall Bridge on the River Aire. 

 

Whitehall Bridge

 

This is a part of Leeds that I had never been to before and, like the part of Holbeck that I had just explored, the 1908 Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows that Whitehall cloth mills, Whitehall soap works, an electric lighting works and a coal depot occupied most of the north bank of the river. To the north of these, Leeds Central Station and its associated railway sidings, goods sheds and warehouses stretched to Wellington Street. 

 

The 1908 OS map showing the area around the River Aire

The waterside industrial buildings have since been replaced by the Whitehall Riverside community, a mixed-use C21 development comprising multi-storey office and apartment blocks, hotels, bars and cafes, car parks and grassed areas. 

A view of the Whitehall Riverside development from Whitehall Bridge

 

Walking along the riverside path, I kept my eyes open for interesting examples of urban landscaping or public sculpture, but all I could see were architecturally uninspiring blocks built mainly of concrete and glass and I wasn’t tempted for a moment to explore the area. 

 

The River Aire as it it passes under Leeds railway station

 

Reaching the east end of the path, an old retaining wall that now supports a car park is built with what looks like another example of very coarse grained Rough Rock, but I was more interested in the fact that the River Aire turns at right angles to the south, before continuing through four parallel arches over a distance of 155 m and reappearing beneath the southern entrance to Leeds railway station at Granary Wharf. 

 

The River Aire passing under Leeds railway station

Known locally as the Dark Arches, more than 18 million bricks were used to build what was one of the largest man-made underground spaces in Britain when it opened in 1869, with the railway engineers Thomas Eliot Harrison and Robert Hodgson being responsible for its design. 

 

The concourse at Leeds railway station

 

The concourse and adjoining Queens Hotel and the offices of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company (LMS) to the British Listed Buildings website are underlain by more extensive vaults, which date to the construction of the Wellington Street Station (1846) and include the culvert for the Mill Goit.

 

The rear elevations of the office of the LMS and the Queens Hotel

 

Although the rear of the steel framed hotel and offices and the concourse are mainly built with red/brown brick with Portland limestone dressings, the latter is used to clad the City Square frontages. During my many visits to Leeds using the train, I had been too preoccupied in catching a bus to an outlying part of the city or a train back to Sheffield to look closely at these buildings. 

 

The Portland stone clad buildings fronting Leeds railway station

 

All three buildings were part of a single phase of construction, from 1931 to 1936, with designs by William Henry Hamlyn - the architect for the LMS - and William Curtis Green, best known for his work on the Dorchester Hotel in London, acting as a consultant.

 

The LMS crest above the entrance to the concourse

 

Historic England describe the 17-bay Queens Hotel, which has 8 storeys with 2 mezzanines and an attic, as being in a stripped Classical style and the only sculptural detail that I noticed was the coat of arms above the entrance to the concourse and the carved crest with roses and thistles above the door to the LMS office on Aire Street.

 

The LMS crest above the Aire Street entrance to the office

 

Holbeck Urban Village in Leeds

 

Egyptian Revival style detailing on the offices at the Temple Works

Entering Holbeck Conservation Area, having briefly examined the buildings stones used for the locks, retaining wall, Bridge 226 and the former Canal Company Office at Granary Wharf – which are Rough Rock, Elland Flags and possibly White Mansfield stone – previous research using Google Street View informed me that the principal building material seen here would be red brick. 

 

Tower Works on the 1908 Ordnance Survey map

 

Tower Works was built for Thomas Richards Harding in 1866, as a factory producing pins for wool, flax, cotton and silk combing and for carding cloth, with his son Colonel Thomas Walter Harding - a mayor of Leeds and a notable philanthropist – extending it considerably in 1899. 

 

The chimneys at Tower Works

The factory operated until 1981 and much of it was demolished and a new development comprising massive multi-storey apartment blocks replacing it, although the Grade II* listed Verona Tower (1864) and Giotto Tower (1899), have been retained along with the Grade II listed Little Chimney (1920), the Engine House (1899) and the Entrance Range (1866). 

 

A detail of the Verona Tower

 

The Verona Tower, by Thomas Shaw, is built with polychrome bricks with gritstone bracketed sills and cornices and its Italianate style is based on the Lamberti Tower in Verona. The Giotto Tower by William Bakewell makes extensive use of Burmantofts terracotta and its design is based on the campanile at Florence Cathedral, begun by Giotto in 1334. 

 

A detail of the Giotto Tower

Apart from the Italianate towers exhibiting fine craftsmanship and materials, which was popular in industrial buildings of the Victorian period, the Giotto Tower functioned as a dust extraction chimney, which was very advanced for its time. Although they have been saved from demolition, they are completely dwarfed and largely obscured by the surrounding apartment blocks, which possess very little architectural merit. 

 

The entrance range at Tower Works

 

After photographing the rear of the Globe Iron Foundry fitting up shop, which has no interest to this Language of Stone Blog, I made my way to Globe Road where I took a few photos of the Entrance Range, which according to Historic England (HE) was also probably designed by Thomas Shaw. 

 

The carriage entrance at Tower Works

Very coarse grained Rough Rock is used for the rusticated round arched carriage entrance, which has a keystone, pilasters supporting the entablature and a modillion cornice – with a rock-faced plinth, voussoirs to the windows, string courses and pyramidal dentils used for decoration to the adjoining red brick walls. 

 

A massive block of Rough Rock used for the base of a pair of pilasters

 

Taking note of the variation of the colours and textures in the paving stones, which I thought was quite unusual and reminded me of the sandstone that has recently been used for the steps at the front of Barnsley Town Hall, I continued to Water Lane. 

 

Paving outside the entrance range to Tower Works

Walking alongside the Hol Beck to the Grade II listed cast iron bridge (1849), which replaced the wooden bridge linking John Marshall and Company's flax mill with the newly built warehouse (1808) on the south side, I noted that Rough Rock has been used for its canalisation. 

 

The bridge over Hol Beck

 

On the south side of Water Lane, the 6 industrial buildings on my list to photograph are all built with red/brown brick and none of these are of interest to this Language of Stone Blog and their age, architectural features and historical significance are best described by the HE listings for Nos. 97, 99, 101, 103, 105 and 125 Water Lane. 

 

Various listed industrial buildings at Holbeck Urban Village

 

Similarly, on Foundry Street, Saw Mill Street, Marshall Street and Bath Street, the premises of foundries, machine shops, workshops, warehouses and various mills are brick built and their descriptions can be found in the Leeds and Hunslet section on the British Listed Buildings website. 

 

Listed buildings in and around Holbeck Urban Village

The predominant material for the industrial buildings is brick, but sandstone from the Elland Flags has been used for the boundary walls to Marshall Mills together with gritstone from the Rough Rock, which can also be seen as setts along with pink and grey granite and whinstone. 

 

Boundary walls to Marshall Mills and road setts

 

Although not part of my Photo Challenge, the most interesting building that I saw in Holbeck Urban Village is the office block to the Grade I listed Temple Mill, which was built as a flax spinning mill as part of the Marshall Mills complex, which originated on the north side of Hol Beck. 

 

The office building at Temple Mill

 

The mill was built 1838-1840 and the office added 1840-1843, with both being designed in the Egyptian Revival style by the English architect Ignatius Bonomi, who modelled them on the Temple of Edfu, Coarse grained and often pebbly gritstone from the Rough Rock has been used in its construction, but finer grained beds have been probably been selected to enable carving of the fine details of the capitals and deep coving.

 

A capital on the Temple Mill office building

 

Granary Wharf in Leeds

 

A plaque for the Leeds Waterfront Heritage Trail

Following on from my day out to Winster, which had involved a total of 7 bus journeys as with a previous trip to Birchover and Stanton-in-Peak, I next took the train to Leeds – firstly to explore the old industrial area of Holbeck, which the 1908 Ordnance Survey (OS) map shows as occupied by textile mills, clothing factories, engineering works and back to back houses for the workers. 

 

The 1908 OS map of Holbeck

For as many years as I can remember, as the train loops around this area on the approach to Leeds station, it consisted mainly of derelict brick built industrial buildings and warehouses, with large open spaces where they have been demolished. In recent years, regeneration has been rapidly taking place with the industrial buildings and old housing being replaced with large apartment blocks, offices and industrial units in an area now known as the Temple District. 

 

A Google Maps view of Holbeck 

 

Having never visited this part of Leeds before, I entered a post code for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge and, noting that there was a cluster of buildings around Granary Wharf on the Leeds and Liverpool and Leeds Canal and the Holbeck Urban Village – in an area dominated by very uninspiring modern architecture - I decided to have a quick look around before further exploring the area to the west of Park Row. 

 

My Photo Challenge for Holbeck Urban Village

Leaving Leeds station by the rear exit to Granary Wharf, where I had caught a Water Taxi when preparing a Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip to look at the building stones of Leeds in 2019, I stopped to photograph the Lock No. 1 and the Grade II* listed former Leeds and Liverpool Company warehouse (c.1776) beyond the River Lock. 

 

Lock No. 1 and the Leeds and Liverpool Company warehouse

 

Making my way past the Double Tree Hotel, the Grade II listed mid C19 crane is surrounded by sandstone paving that looks like it has been laid as part of the recent development, but the original setts at the edge of the dock have been retained. 

 

Paving and setts outside the Double Tree Hotel

 

I didn’t closely examine the sandstone used for the setts but, with this section of the canal being built 1770-1777, the source of the stone for these and the very large blocks of gritstone used for the canal walls is very likely to be the Bramley Fall Quarry in the Rough Rock, which operated next to the River Aire 6 km north-east of Granary Wharf as the crow flies. 

 

Large blocks of Bramley Hall stone

 

The very coarse grained gritstone from the original Bramley Hall Quarry developed a reputation for the size of blocks and the great strength and resistance to weathering, with these being widely used for engineering work. Although stone named Bramley Hall is quarried near Bramhope, the original quarry closed c.1839 and this should be considered as a generic trade name for pebbly gritstone obtained from certain quarries on the Rough Rock. 

 

Bridge 226

 

Continuing west along the canal side, Bridge 226 was built 1770-1777 for road traffic, with vermiculated rustication decorating its voussoirs and buttresses, but Historic England (HE) suggest that the parapets with plain incised panels were rebuilt c.1819. 

 

A detail of quartz pebbles in the Rough Rock (21 mm diameter coin)

 

Getting very close to the east elevation of the bridge, beds of large quartz pebbles can be seen in the very coarse Rough Rock and, as explained by Bill Fraser of the Leeds Geological Association during a Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip to Roundhay Park, these were formed at the base of a large river channel. This formed a part of the vast deltaic system in which the very coarse grained sandstones of the Millstone Grit Group were deposited. 

 

A quartz pebble in vermiculated masonry (21 mm diameter coin)

 

The retaining wall next to the tow path is built with sandstone that has a completely different character to the Rough Rock, although occasional blocks of the latter are incorporated into it Its yellowish colour, relatively fine grain size and well defined plane bedding immediately made me think of the very many examples of the Elland Flags, from the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation, which I had seen when exploring Headingley and Headingley Hill a few weeks earlier. 

 

Elland Flags sandstone used in the retaining wall

The Basin Lock to the west of Bridge 226 was also built 1770-1777 and the very massive blocks used for its walls are presumably further examples of the Rough Rock from the Bramley Fall Quarry, but I just took a few general photographs of it. 

 

Basin Lock

 

Crossing over the bridge, the former Canal Company Office is considered by HE to have been erected after the completion of the canal in 1816 and is built with a pale buff coloured stone that looks quite different to the Rough Rock and the Elland Flags. 

 

The Canal Company Office

I couldn’t get near enough to examine it with my hand lens, but I haven't seen this pattern of differential weathering of fine grained beds in any Upper Carboniferous sandstone and it reminds me of the ‘old leather texture’ of weathered White Mansfield stone - a variety of the Permian Cadeby Formation that is classified as a dolomitic sandstone.

A detail of weathered stone

In 1819, the horse drawn Mansfield to Pinxton railway first connected to the Cromford Canal, which was opened in 1794 to link with the River Trent, and it is theoretically possible that White Mansfield stone could have been brought along the canal network to Leeds, but this would be very unusual given the abundance of good quality local stone and it needs further investigation when I next visit Leeds. 

 

The south elevation of the Canal Company Office