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The waterside industrial buildings have since been replaced by the Whitehall Riverside community, a mixed-use C21 development comprising multi-storey office and apartment blocks, hotels, bars and cafes, car parks and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