Otley Road to Alma Road in Headingley

 

Brodrick Court on Alma Road

Once I had finished preparing my day out to Headingley, specifically to establish the building stones that I was likely to encounter when undertaking a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, I then consulted the West Yorkshire Metro website to find the bus service to Headingley and its point of departure in Leeds city centre. 

 

The West Yorkshire Metro map of bus stops in Leeds city centre

 

Setting off early from Treeton, as with my last visit to Leeds a few weeks earlier to explore Morley, the TM travel X54 bus arrived at the Sheffield Interchange in enough time for me to catch the 08:48 train and, having caught the No. 24 bus from the City Square E stand in the city centre, I alighted opposite the Arndale Centre on Otley Road. 

 

Nos 79 to 83A Otley Road

 

At 10:16, I took my first photograph of the early C19 Nos. 79, 81, 83 and 83A and Attached Outbuildings, which the Historic England (HE) listing describes as being built with “coursed gritstone rubble”. I just took a few photos from the opposite side of the road but I can clearly see from these that the sandstone, which has a yellowish colouration on fresh surfaces, has plain bedding and the bed height, which are consistent with those from the Coal Measures - probably the Elland Flags - and not the Millstone Grit. 

 

A map of buildings on my Photo Challenge

Referring to the first of several maps that I had prepared, I continued up Shaw Lane and, when photographing Nos. 1-6 Princes Grove (c.1860), I could see that the tooled blackened masonry was laid in much deeper courses and I immediately thought would be much coarser grained Rough Rock – with HE describing it again as built with gritstone. 

 

Nos. 1-6 Princes Grove

Continuing past the junction with Grove Lane, the late C19 gate piers to Glebe House are made of very large blocks of very coarse grained gritstone which has large scale cross-bedding and, along with the adjoining wall, this is no doubt another example of locally quarried Rough Rock. These have a surprising amount of detail and as with all the ‘buildings’ on my Photo Challenge, except St. Michael’s church, it is Grade II listed – albeit for group value only. 

 

Gate piers and the boundary wall at Glebe House

 

Returning to Grove Lane, which is another leafy part of Headingley, development of this area started in the second half of the C19 and a few large detached and terraced houses are marked on the 1893 Ordnance Survey map, but there is still a considerable amount of green space. 

 

Gove Lane on the 1893 Ordnance Survey map

This was later developed at various times throughout the C20, which includes a small estate of late 1930’s flat roofed, interwar semi-detached houses, which are brick built and partly rendered and therefore not of real interest to this Language of Stone Blog, but they provide an interesting example of late interwar domestic architecture. 

 

A pair of interwar semi-detached houses on Grove Lane

Turning up Grove Road, Ashfield (c.1860) is a large house built with coarse grained Rough Rock and which is attributed to the architect Cuthbert Brodrick, who designed Leeds Town Hall (1858), Leeds Corn Exchange (1863) and Leeds City Museum (1868). 

 

Ashfield

 

On Alma Road is Wheatfield House (c.1855), a large Italianate style house that was substantially extended and altered in the late C20 to form a hospice, which has a wing built over the wall that has angle turrets and incorporates fine egg and dart mouldings. 

 

Wheatfield house and its coach house

Its contemporary coach house and stables is quite elaborate in comparison, with rusticated quoins, window arches and bands of hammer-dressed sandstone that alternate with plain sawn bands, which clearly show the pebbly nature of the Rough Rock used here. 

 

Alternating bands of sawn and hammer-dressed Rough Rock

Making my way down Alma Road past Moorfield House, which I could only get glimpses of from a distance, I next stopped outside Brodrick Court (1859) - another Italianate house by Cuthbert Brodrick - where its massive gate piers and boundary walls were next on my list to photograph. 

 

A gate pier at Brodrick Court

Formed from a single massive block of very coarse grained Rough Rock, which displays very large-scale cross-bedding, looking closely its characteristic quartz pebbles are quite clearly seen and some of these are over 10 mm in diameter.

 

A detail of quartz pebbles in a gate pier

 

Preparing a Day Out to Headingley

 

The distribution of quarries in the vicinity of Headingley village

Following on from another very enjoyable field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, which finished by making some observations of the archaeological dig at Sheldon, my next day out was to explore the affluent suburb of Headingley in Leeds. 

 

An aerial view of Headingley

 

I first visited Headingley more than 40 years ago to visit a girlfriend, and have since stayed in a B&B a few times when taking my Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors exams, attended a cricket match against South Africa, passed through it on the bus when visiting the Church of St. John the Baptist in Adel and most recently as a passenger in a car when co-leading another field trip to Otley Chevin. 

 

The British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Headingley

 

As with most of my days out on the buses and trains from Treeton, I entered a postcode for a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, which highlighted 100 listed buildings that would entail a walk of nearly 10 km – based on a route that I devised using Google Map. 

 

My planned route to complete the Photo Challenge for Headingley

Undertaking more detailed planning with Google Street View, I noted that very many of the listed buildings on my list to photograph are surrounded by large leafy gardens or are set back from the road, where I could only get glimpses of the fabric from the public thoroughfare. 

 

The geology around Headingley

 

Looking at the geological map, except for the Stanningley Rock that underlies Far Headingley and the area to the east, which was not part of my exploration of this area of Leeds, most of my route was set on the Elland Flags, a Pennine Lower Coal Measures Formation sandstone.

 

An extract from the geological memoir

 

The geological memoir for Leeds (1950) makes only very brief reference to the sandstones in the district that have been used as a building stone – the Lower Follifoot Grit and the Rough Rock from the Millstone Grit Group and the Elland Flags. 

 

The description of the Rough Rock in the geological memoir

 

The descriptions of these sandstone formations in the geological memoir are again extremely brief and don’t mention their physical characteristics in detail, but I had seen the very coarse grained and often pebbly Rough Rock at an old quarry in Roundhay Park and as a building stone at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds Minster, Leeds City Museum, the Corn Exchange and various other historic buildings in Leeds city centre. 

 

The description of the Elland Flags in the geological memoir

Except for a small exposure in Roundhay Park, I have never seen an outcrop of the Elland Flags, although I have been aware of its reputation as a paving stone and, as particularly seen in the area around Pudsey, its widespread local use for roofing. Although typically fine grained and thinly bedded, it does contain massive medium grained beds that are suitable for ashlar. 

 

The Building Stones Heritage of Leeds

Although mainly based on Leeds city centre, The Building Stones Heritage of Leeds (1996) by Francis G. Dimes and Murray Mitchell, mentions that the columns of the arcades at Leeds Minster and the original stone at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, as well as other buildings, are built with sandstone from the Elland Flags. 

 

Sandstones and quarries in the Leeds area

 

This excellent and well researched publication provides a lot of useful information of the various sandstones used for the historic buildings in Leeds, including those that were brought in from much further afield – from near Bradford and Derbyshire – once the railways came to Leeds. 

 

The route of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway (blue)

 

Headingley station on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway opened in 1849 and, as shown on the Building Stones Database for England map explorer, the Rough Rock was quarried extensively along the Meanwood Valley and the Elland Flags was worked at Woodhouse – both of which are within 2 km of the centre of the old village – and I therefore expected to see that these have been exclusively used for all of the buildings marked on the 1851 Ordnance Survey map. 

 

Old quarries in the vicinity of Headingley