Park Square & St. Paul's Street in Leeds

 

A detail of Nos. 14-18 St. Paul's Street

Continuing my Photo Challenge in Leeds, after photographing the textile warehouses along Wellington Street, with their attractive polychrome brickwork, I headed up Queen Street to No. 9 Somers Street, where the late C18 workshop and warehouse is built with plain dark red/brown bricks, but it has no interest to this Language of Stone Blog. 

 

Vicarage Chambers

 

Entering Park Square at the north end of Park Square West, I could not find the statue of Circe in the garden and continued to Vicarage Chambers (1908), which has brick red terracotta used for the ground floor and the bold window surrounds on the first floor. 

 

A detail of a terracotta panel at Vicarage Chambers

 

Although this blog essentially describes stone in all of its forms, having worked background in the building restoration industry, I also have an interest in clay based building materials – brick, terracotta and faience – and Leeds has very many fine examples of these. 

 

A detail of the door surround to Vicarage Chambers

 

The architectural terracotta and faience by Burmantofts Pottery is best known but Historic England (HE) make no mention of the source of the terracotta used here or for the early C20 doorway added to No. 7 Park Square (c.1790); however, the name and date on the door surround are made of white faience that may be product described as Marmo.

 

The terracotta door surround to No. 7 Park Square East

 

At the Grade II* listed St. Paul’s House (1878), the wonderful factory and showroom designed in the Hispano-Moorish style by Thomas Ambler for John Barran, the terracotta is made by Doulton & Co. – a manufacturer that was first established at Vauxhall in London, but on this occasion I just took photos of the details of the mouldings and the blue plaque. 

 

A detail of the terracotta at St. Paul's House

 

On the corner of Park Square East, the late C19 Nos. 14-18 St. Paul's Street is another warehouse that uses bands of blue bricks to contrast with the red brick walling, with large pairs of brackets forming part of the deep eaves. 

 

Nos. 14-18 St. Paul's Street

 

A uniformly buff coloured sandstone is used for the dressings, which I didn't recognise or examine but presume to be a West Yorkshire sandstone from one of the quarries that were accessible by the railway. HE describe these as “Continuous moulded segmental brick and stone arches with drip mould over doors and windows, moulded panels below windows. 1st floor: Gothic cusped arches with carved foliage in tympana, carved capitals to brick pilasters; 2nd-floor moulded segmental brick/stone arches with continuous moulded sill”. 

 

Gothic cusped arches with carved foliage in the tympana

Although now in the Leeds City Centre Conservation Area, many of the Victorian buildings on St. Paul's Street have long since been replaced by C20 buildings, some of which are mentioned in the Building Stone Heritage of Leeds (1996) by Francis. G. Dimes and Murray Mitchell and have themselves been demolished and redeveloped. 

 

Walk 3 in the Building Stone of Leeds

I still had to complete my Photo Challenge and I didn’t look for any of these buildings and just noted the rapakivi granite, known by the trade name Baltic Brown, which has been used above the entrance to Enterprise House, and the façade of the Starbucks coffee shop, which I didn’t photograph but I think is St. Bees sandstone.

 

A detail of the entrance to Enterprise House