Black Bull St. to Neptune St. in Leeds

 

A detail of the terracotta at the entrance to TF and JH Braime Ltd

Leaving Crown Point Road, I continued my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge by walking up Black Bull Street, where I caught a glimpse of Leeds Dock beneath one of the large apartment blocks that have been thrown up in this part of Leeds in recent years.

 

A view of Leeds Dock from Black Bull street

 

The Alf Cooke Printing works, by Thomas Ambler, was the next building on my list, which was originally built in 1881 and then partially rebuilt in 1894 after a fire. During my previous visit to Leeds, I had encountered his work at Nos. 1-13 Boar Lane (1872), where he was responsible for many building on this street, and also Westminster Hall and St. James’s Hall (1887).

 

The west end of the Alf Cooke Printing Works

Alf Cooke established his printing business in 1872, producing cheap prints of art works for the mass market, and the works is built with brick, terracotta and stone dressings, with a 30 bay frontage to Hunslet Road and a splayed corner bay with a clock tower, which was added in 1894.

 

The Hunslet Road elevation of the Alf Cooke Printing Works

According to the book Building a Great City - Leeds Architects and Architecture 1790-1914, the New Crown Point Works were claimed to be the ‘largest, cleanest, healthiest and most completely fitted printing works in the world’ and it now houses the Printworks Campus at Leeds City College.

 

A detail of the entrance to the Alf Cooke Printing Works

 

Continuing down Hunslet Road, the 1893 Ordnance Survey map shows that the area was dominated by heavy industry, which included a locomotive works, foundries, a nail works, engineering works and various mills, with back to back houses accommodating their workers. These have now been replaced by modern industrial units, with services and retail outlets occupying much of the space and there is very little of interest to see.

 

Hunslet on the 1893 OS map

Next on my Photo Challenge was the factory of Braime Pressed Steel Works (1911-13), which was formed back in 1881 by Thomas Braime and became widely known for the production of its oil cans in a small workshop in Hunslet, but subsequently occupied the current building and now has many subsidiary companies overseas.

 

The Braime Pressed Steel Works

 

The architect is not known, but the red brick buildings continued to be extended with other alterations and, although of a generally utilitarian design, the terracotta details around the main entrance are ornate and described by Historic England as having ‘flanking columns bearing raised floral motifs, supporting an open segmental pediment above cartouche and cornucopias’.

 

The entrance to the Braime Pressed Steel Works

I retraced my steps down Hunslet Road and continued along Sayner Road and cut through Leeds Dock to have a quick look at the Royal Armouries, which I had visited a few time before but I always like to take a photograph the Hall of Steel.

 

The Hall of Steel at the Royal Armouries

 

After taking a few photos of the River Aire and the various industrial buildings on the north bank, I went down to Knight’s Way Bridge and crossed over to Neptune Street to find the next few listed buildings on my Photo Challenge.

 

The machine shop and office on Neptune Street

 

The first of these was the early C19 machine shop and office, which are of no great interest and behind this on Neptune Street is the four storey dyeworks and attached workshop and warehouse, which is of a similar date. Walking back along Neptune Street, the cast iron bollard is of no interest to this Language of Stone Blog and I continued to East Street.

 

The dyeworks on Neptune Street

 

East Street Mills (c.1825) is a large brick built complex of buildings that was originally used for making flax, but is has been converted into residential use. Apart from its original chimney, it doesn’t possess any particularly interesting features, but it provides another example of the very varied industrial heritage of Leeds.

 

Views of East Street Mills