From City Square to Briggate in Leeds

 

Old Father Time on the Time Ball Buildings

Just under 4 weeks after I had spent a long day out to Batley and Birstall, having briefly revisited various churches in South Yorkshire during the intervening period, I returned to West Yorkshire again – this time to undertake another British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge in Leeds, comprising 39 buildings in the eastern part of the Leeds City Centre Central Conservation Area. 

 

The Leeds City Centre Central Conservation Area

Having set off from Treeton at 9:30, I arrived in Leeds at 11:15 and, leaving the railway station, I stopped to take a couple of photos of the former General Post Office (1894) by Sir Henry Tanner, the chief architect at H.M. Office of Works in London, who appears to have been best known for designing large post office buildings, but I had not heard of him before. 

 

The former General Post Office

I have never looked closely at the fabric, partly because the front has usually been obscured by the tables and chairs from the various bars that have occupied the building over the years and also because I have been mainly interested in the various statues in City Square. 

 

The statue of James Watts on City Square

 

According to the Building Stones Heritage of Leeds (BSHL), Haworth Stone from the Brandon Grit in the Millstone Grit Group was obtained from a quarry on Penistone Hill, to the south of Haworth, which was facilitated by the well established railway network in the region. 

 

The quarries on Penistone Hill

Heading along Boar Lane, I stopped very briefly to photograph the Grade I listed Holy Trinity Church (1721-1727), built with very coarse grained and often pebbly Rough Rock, which BSHL states was quarried from the Meanwood Quarries in north Leeds.  

 

Holy Trinity Church

On the opposite side of the road, the first building on my Photo Challenge was Nos. 1-13 Boar Lane - a large former Temperance hotel, shops, offices and warehouse (1869-72) - which are designed in both the Italianate and Gothic Revival styles by Thomas Ambler for Alderman John Barran and built in brick with yellowish sandstone dressings, which looks like the Elland Flags. 

 

Views of Nos. 1-16 Boar Lane

Although the prominent civic and public buildings, by George Corson and Cuthbert Broderick in particular, are built in stone - as I had discovered during my last trip to Leeds - very many of its finest buildings are built with brick, terracotta or faience tiles made from the mudstones from the local Coal Measures strata. 

 

A detail of Nos. 1-16 Boar Lane

 

This Language of Stone Blog is mainly about geology, stone built architecture, memorials, monuments and sculpture but, given that my time spent in the building restoration industry in London has provided me with a great appreciation of historic architecture that is built with a wide variety of materials, I will diverge from this strict subject. 

 

Time Ball Buildings

Turning down Briggate, the stuccoed early C19 Grade II* Time Ball Buildings, which was further elaborated by the watchmaker John Dyson c.1872 and c.1900, is one of the most interesting buildings that I have seen in Leeds. 

 

A detail of Time Ball Buildings

 

The gilded time ball mechanism was linked to Greenwich and dropped at exactly 1pm each day and the large clock, which is cantilevered from the front of a bay in a frame, is surmounted by a sculpture of Old Father Time. This is the work of the renowned Leeds sculptor, John Wormald Appleyard, whose fine stone carving in Caen stone is seen in Leeds Central Library. 

 

An information panel on Briggate

When I explored Granary Wharf, Holbeck Urban Village and Wellington Street in July, I learned a lot about the post Industrial Revolution industries in Leeds. An information panel informed me that Briggate used to be a very wide market place that extended from Leeds Bridge to the modern Headrow and was once the world’s largest woollen cloth market. 

 

The 1852 OS map of Briggate and the adjacent yards

 

Briggate was created in 1207 and it was flanked by long thin burgage plots, which were occupied by craftsmen and traders, and by the C17 it was lined with houses, workshops and inns. These subsequently developed as yards in the C18, with a variety of industrial and commercial ventures sharing space with living accommodation, and this street pattern is clearly recorded on the 1852 Ordnance Survey (OS) map. 

 

The Queen's Court bar

 

In respect of the early C18 Nos. 165A and 166-169 Briggate, a former merchant’s house and workshops, now occupied by the Queen’s Court and Fibre bars, Historic England (HE) state that the rooms on the upper floors and to the right of the entrance passage were probably used as workrooms, warehousing and showrooms/shops, together with the north ranges of Queen's Court. 

 

The Fibre bar

Purchases of cloth were made in the market and the merchant employed workmen in the finishing processes but, in the early C19 factory production resulted in the change of use of such buildings, including those of the mid C18 brick built Queen’s Court. 

 

Views of the north range of Queen's Court

Records suggest that the north and east ranges were occupied by a hatter, wool-stapler and insurance agent by 1817, with it being the premises of Sidney and Stables - a tea coffee and spice dealer, latterly tea dealer and grocery warehouse. HE also mention that the south range possibly included the premises of a cornflour and bacon dealer in the later C18 and early C19 and that a stationer, ironmonger, linen merchant, silk mercer and hosier were also occupiers in this period. 

 

Views of the south range of Queen's Court

 

Continuing down Briggate and under the railway bridge, Nos. 3-5 Blayds Yard (c.1800) comprise another row of houses with workshops, now a  bar, which are built in red/brown brick and HE describe as “An important surviving example of the type of housing built for textile workers within the historic centre of Leeds in the late C18/early C19, in the rear yard of an C18 town house”. 

 

Nos. 3-5 Blayds Yard