North Lane to Ash Crescent

 

A coat of arms at the Headingley Taps

Leaving Headingley Methodist Church, having spent only 15 minutes taking a look at its wonderful interior, I quickly walked down North Lane to the next building on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge, the Headingley Taps public house – a former pumping station that was built in 1880 for the Leeds Corporation Waterworks.

 

The Headingley Taps public house

 

With its Dutch gables, dormer windows and louvred ventilators with pyramidal roofs and finials, I was very surprised to learn that such an architecturally interesting building was used for this utilitarian purpose - but I have since learned that this was common during the later Victorian era.

 

Rough Rock dressings and Elland Flags walling

 

When researching my day out to Headingley, I concluded that sandstone from the Elland Flags would be used for general walling and the Rough Rock for dressings and ashlar in the finest buildings. The pebbly gritstone used here is certainly the Rough Rock and the yellowish, fine grained plane bedded sandstone is very similar to that seen at Ivy Cottage and Nos. 79 to 83A Otley Road, which I presumed to be from the Elland Flags.

 

Gate piers and the lodge at the former Leeds Corporation Waterworks

The separately Grade II listed lodge is built with similar materials and the gate piers, which are included with the lodge are made of massive blocks of pebbly gritstone, with large scale cross-bedding, and after taking a few record photos of these I proceeded to the former Parochial Institute (1884) on Bennett Road.

 

The former Parochial Institute

 

This was originally built as the meeting rooms for St. Michael’s parish church, with the Gothic Revival design by George Corson – a Scottish architect who was very active in Leeds and designed many large houses in Headingley and the wonderful Leeds Central Library (1884).

 

The entrance to the Parochial Institute

 

Coarse grained gritstone is again used in its construction, with the Corinthian capitals to the column and responds to the entrance providing a good example of how this can be used for surprisingly ornate architectural details.

 

A Corinthian capital

Above these are sculpted panels that depict St. Michael and the dragon and the royal coat of arms, which I couldn’t examine closely but from my photos look like they have been carved from a finer grained sandstone that is unlike the locally quarried Elland Flags.

 

A frieze sculpture of St. Michael and the dragon

By the time that it was built, the railways had been bringing in top quality medium grained sandstone from further afield, such as Bolton Woods from the massive variety of the Elland Flags to the north of Bradford, which was previously named the Gaisby Rock.

 

The Royal coat of arms above the entrance to the Parochial Institute

Making my way back to North Lane, I continued down to the junction with St. Michael’s Road, where the early and mid C19 Nos. 76 and 78 occupy the corner site. Although I took photos from a distance and the stonework is quite blackened, I can see that the yellowish plane bedded sandstone is probably another example of locally quarried Elland Flags, with the dressings constructed from coarse grained Rough Rock.

 

Views of Nos. 76 and 78 St. Michael's road

 

The next building on my photo challenge was the former Sunday School (1908), originally built as a Baptist church, and the South Parade Baptist Church (1925), a complex of red brick buildings with gritstone dressings, which Historic England (HE) says were designed by Percy Robinson and William Alban Jones and W.A. Jones and J.E. Stocks respectively.

 

South Parade Baptist Church

 

Although of little interest to this Language of Stone Blog and I didn’t inspect it closely, the HE listing quite unusually describes the dressings as being made from the Rough Rock that was once extensively quarried at Horsforth and transported to the city centre, after the opening of the Horsforth station on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway line in 1849.

 

The former Baptist church and Sunday School

Taking a diversion to Ash Crescent, No. 2 is dated by HE to the late C19 and described as being designed in the C17 'cottage orné' style, but it is not marked on the 1909 Ordnance Survey map and first appears as a lodge at the south-east corner of the grounds of Headingley Lodge on the 1933 edition – perhaps representing an error in recording a building that certainly has the style of a late Victorian lodge.

 

The front elevation of No. 2 Ash Crescent

 

Although the masonry is quite blackened, it is still possible to see that there is a great contrast between the yellowish, plane bedded walling stone and the massive gritstone used for the quoins and dressings, which have developed a grey patina, and stone slates have been used for the roof.

 

The rear elevation of No. 2 Ash Crescent