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