Wikipedia:University of Leeds/Events and Workshops/Wiki Loves Monuments

In September anyone can take part in the annual Wiki Loves Monuments competition by submitting photographs of listed buildings and scheduled monuments https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org.uk/

This year, University of Leeds University Libraries partnered with Rachael Unsworth from Leeds City Walking Tours (https://www.leedscitywalkingtours.co.uk/) who will took us on a guided tour round the Streets of Leeds.

Until 2014 Rachael was a lecturer in Urban Geography here at the University and led an entertaining walk taking in both high profile some slightly more unusual buildings.

Photographs from the walk have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons some of which are displayed in the gallery below.

See the event dashboard for more uploads and edits made as part of the event:

https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/University_of_Leeds/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_Leeds

Gallery

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Notes provided by Rachael Unsworth

Chancellor’s Court: part of the 1960s-70s extension of the UoL designed by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. The firm was also designing the Barbican in London at this time. Originally intended as an open space that could take a marquee when a large covered space was needed. Re-landscaped 1995. Art works by Lorna Green added 1990s.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Chancellor%27s_Court,_University_of_Leeds

Priestley Centre made out of former staff facilities 2016.

Lyddon Hall: original simple house of 1826, built for a tobacco industrialist. Bought in 1844 by Quaker brush manufacturer Joseph Armistead, who enlarged and altered it. Sold to Yorkshire College in 1902.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lyddon_Hall,_University_of_Leeds

Manmade Fibres – Mitzi Cunliffe sculpture Man-made fibres 1956 (Portland Stone) (architect Allan Johnson, who had joined Lanchester Lucas & Lodge practice – designers of Brotherton, Parkinson, Michael Sadler. Johnson designed the engineering buildings).

Mitzi Cunliffe (1918-2006) sculpted the central symbol at above the main entrance.

On the ground: ‘Texta Texens’ by Sue Lawty 2016. Poet Helen Mort (Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow UoL 2014-2016) + sculptor Dan Jones – using many words relating to woven textiles. https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-arts-culture/news/article/3872/celebrating-the-yorkshire-year-of-the-textile-on-campus

Agriculture – last of the range of purpose-built college buildings by the practice of Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905). This building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse’s grandson Paul.

St George’s Fields: 3.6 hectares (9 acres) land bought by Leeds General Cemetery Company 1830s. Architectural competition for its design won by John Clark of Leeds. Landscaped by Chamberlin in 1968 after removal of most of the monuments. Gravestones with lists of poorer people were used for the footpaths. A full photographic record of all gravestones made 1960s.

Chapel: John Clark (1798-1857) – from Edinburgh late 1820s. Unlike the v small number of contemporaries in Leeds (Taylor and Chantrell) he was not a church architect.

Entrée to Leeds as winner of competition for Commercial Buildings 1825. Neatly on budget.

Bank Mills 1831-3 for Hives & Atkinson (the one upstream from Rose Wharf.) Later Hunslet Mill for Wilkinson. Gledhow Grove for Hives 1835-40. Meanwood Park for Beckett c.1834. Also 2 banks (Bond St, corner of Boar Lane – both dem.) C. Webster considers his designs of the gateway and lodges + chapel at the cemetery to be his ‘finest design’ (Building a great Victorian city: Leeds architects and architecture, 2011, p.125). Other buildings by John Clark on this route: Waverley. House, Woodhouse Sq 1840; St George’s Church 1836.

Water Tower staircase: trapezoid in plan; alternating bands of concrete and glass, stepped on W side and topped by a pyramidal concrete water tank. Stairs originally open-sided; glass added later.

Henry Price 1964 – designed by Christof Bon, of the practice Chamberlin, Powell & Bon. The first of the CPB buildings to go up. Cantilevered out over 1830s cemetery wall.

Western Campus: the old Grammar School site was part-exchanged for university land at Alwoodley (reserved in case needed for sports fields). Business School opened 1999. Innovation Centre and Health Sciences – later LUBS. Marks & Spencer Archive opened 2012 – 70,000 items. School of Law completed early 2011. Architect of Victorian school late 1850s: E.M. Barry (1830-1880), one of 4 architect sons of Sir Charles Barry. Finished father’s project of rebuilding HoP + designed Covent Garden OH. Head of school 1854-62 Rev Alfred Barry (1826-1910). Law Faculty: One of many departments that had to be patient for new premises. Moved out of Parkinson late 1950s. New building not until 2011. Thackrah Building: Teaching space for LUBS and School of Law

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Charles_Thackrah_Building,_University_of_Leeds

Lyddon Terrace Beresford considered it the handsomest street. Houses built 1825 – 1906. 11 and 13 were grandest – built 1825 to be let. 3, 5, 7 and 9 built 1830s. 15-25 probably late 1830s. East side 1870-81 ‘every man for himself’. Numbers 18-26 bought by UoL 1955-1970 (total cost £7,566). Law faculty moved to 2 of the houses in 1958 (out of Parkinson basement) and expanded to take up all of 18-26 by 1971.

Fairbairn House – National Centre for Atmospheric Science Formerly attributed to John Clark but probably by R.D. Chantrell (1793-1872) – architect of Parish Church ad 3 important buildings now lost (Wellington Baths, Phil Hall and South Market). For Peter Fairbairn, engineer owner of Wellington Foundry, mayor when Queen Victoria visited Leeds to open LTH 1858 and she stayed at this house. Sir Peter's son, Sir Andrew, auctioned off the grounds as building plots in 1865 and lived at the house until 1870. A member of the Gott family lived there for a short time before the building became a vicarage, later a nursing home, then the Leeds Clergy School. As part of the University's property the house became a hall of residence and then residential and conference facility of the Nuffield Institute for Health Services Studies.

The Priory (name since 2020): The Community of the Resurrection (Anglo-Catholic) founded in houses 1892 to enable men too poor to go to Oxbridge to read theology at Leeds. Rebuilt 1908 to 1924 by Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920; articled to GGS Jr.); completed by Leslie Moore (son-in-law). ‘Collegiate Tudor’, red-brown brick with stone quoins, a turreted 4-storey gatehouse and traceried windows. Inside: Chapel (1928), refectory (on left), meeting rooms with panelling, fireplaces and fine staircase. Cloister-like rear courtyard garden. Converted to student hall 2007.

Springfield House 1792 for Thomas Livesey, cloth dresser.

Dental Institute (file 2007) BDP 1978. Leeds dental service origins 1904 Dispensary.

Claremont – at root a Georgian house of 1772 (for Quaker merchant John Elam. Altered in 1856 for John Deakin Heaton (by George Corson).

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18954346

12 Clarendon Rd – by Corson 1868 for George Herbert Rayner – importer of acorn cups, used in dyeing.

14 Clarendon Rd – by Corson 1869 for Atkinson, a mill owner (who commissioned C.W. Cope Altarpiece painting in St George’s).

Woodhouse Square planned in grounds of Claremont.

Statue of Peter Fairbairn, Matthew Noble (1817-1876), who did the statues of V&A in LTH vestibule.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sir_Peter_Fairbairn_statue,_Woodhouse_Square,_Leeds

Waverley House – built for Atkinson 1840 by John Clark. Houses on S side: Ellen Heaton’s house/Swarthmore by local builder/architect Richard William Moore (a pupil of Chantrell) 1845-6.

Joseph’s Well – only Wikimedia shots are from NE. See next page for more on the firm for which these buildings were designed – under St Paul’s House.

Hanover Lane works 1888. St Paul’s St still warehouse + cutting rooms; extra accommodation Somers St. 1904 extension Chorley Lane – whole company in one place. Covered 5 acres. 3000 employees. St Paul’s St warehouse sold to Public Benefit Footwear Co. Largest clothing factory in the world at its working peak. 156,000sf

Centaur House 1889 clothing factory by E.J. Dodgshun for R. Eastwood.

St George’s church austere Gothic, John Clark 1836-8. A preaching box devoid of understanding of Gothic – about to be shown up by Chantrell’s new Parish Church. Spire blew down 1962.

LGI finished 1868; opened 1869 George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) Son of a clergyman. Involved in design of >800 buildings; at his death work was proceeding on >60 buildings. “Pugin’s articles excited me almost to fury, and I suddenly found myself like a person awakened from a long feverish dream … I was in fact a new man” (G.G. Scott, Personal and professional recollections, 1879. Girouard, 1990, p.192).

Turning point in W Yorks architecture and a departure in hospital layout. Wrathmell p.83-88.

Chief physician of LGI went with GGS on trip to see hospitals in Belgium and France.

Consulted Florence Nightingale: high ceilings, well ventilated, plenty of light.

Methodist Chapel 1835-6 James Simpson (1793-1864), with late Victorian wrap-around. One of 18 chapels in the area now counted as Leeds, and there were many more beyond.

Park Square – late C18 residential square. Became a concentration of medics and lawyers + some other professionals. Still law and some private clinics. Some properties have recently been converted back to residential. Architect John Clark lived at 4 Park Sq c.1830, then 8 Park Sq 1834 and 9 Park Sq until his death in 1857.

St Paul’s House Pioneer of ready-made clothing, Sir John Barran, 1st Baronet (1821-1905), bought 8 houses of Park Sq. By then no longer so appealing as a place to live, though still in demand by medics and lawyers.

A factory: 200 sewing machines, cutting and pressing rooms, warehouse facilities and showroom.

So different from a 6-storey brick mill.

Moorish/Venetian merchant style. Influence of Alhambra – drawing in 1840s by Owen Jones.

“Truly Mohammedan cresting” – architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner.

Ambler’s design started from principles of the activities to be accommodated.

Changing demand: shift from utilitarian to decorative, using buildings as marketing, to purvey products and services of expanded economy – shops, warehouses, offices.

To flaunt their wealth and attract customers, proprietors dressed up new specialised premises “in decorations borrowed from palaces and cathedrals” (Hamilton Thomson, A. 1945, Architecture in Leeds, PTS, 37, pt II, p.67.)

There had already been some fine commercial and public buildings but this was novel in many ways.

First use in Leeds of Doulton’s architectural terracotta. (Their Lambeth office built at this time.)

Also dining room, modern sanitation, light and airy. Healthier happier workforce and a more beautiful town (Douglas).

When Barran arrived in Leeds 1942, <1000 in tailoring. Started the firm 1851. At the end of his life >20,000 in tailoring (Honeyman, p.12) and next phase of mass bespoke was taking off: Burton, Hepworth, Henry Price and others. As Barrans, lasted until 1971.

University of Leeds – bibliography

Beyond gold: the University of Leeds 1904-2004. Leeds: LUP. ISBN 0 853 16239 5

Beresford, M.W. (1980) Walks round red brick. Leeds: LUP. ISBN 978 0 900741 71 5 Beresford, M.W. (2012) Walks round red brick. (Second edition with additional text by Christopher Hammond and photographs by Ruth Baumberg). Leeds: Thoresby Society and Leeds Philosophical & Literary Society.

Cunningham, C. and Waterhouse, P. (1992) Alfred Waterhouse 1830-1905: Biography of a Practice. Clarendon Studies in Art. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 10: 0198175116

Dixon, R. and Muthesius, S. (1985) [1978] Victorian Architecture (2nd ed.), London: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-20160-9

Gosden, P.H.J.H. and Taylor, A.J. (1975) Studies in the history of a University, 1874-1974.

To commemorate the centenary of the University of Leeds. Leeds: E.J. Arnold & Son.

See especially: Beresford, M.W. Red brick and Portland stone: a building history, p.133-180.

Shimmin, A.N. (1954) The University of Leeds – the first half-century. Cambridge: CUP.

University of Leeds (2003) Estate strategy 2003-2013. (Followed 1995 strategy).

University of Leeds (2006) Estate strategy review 2006-2016 . University of Leeds (2008) The University of Leeds Strategic Development Framework. Produced by Carey Jones Architects.

Woods, F. (2018) Academic Modern – recollections by Geoffrey Wilson (1921-2023), planning officer of the University 1848-1980. Twentieth Century Architecture Design & conservation. No.1. p.22-29.

Wrathmell S. (2005) Leeds. Pevsner Architectural Guide. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0 300 10736 6