Description

LEEDS

SE3033NW ALBION STREET
714-1/76/12 (East side)
19/03/70 No.48
Moorlands House

GV II

Formerly known as: No.48 Premises of Leek and Westbourne
Building Society ALBION STREET.
Premises of the Leeds and West Yorkshire Assurance Company,
now offices. 1852-55, altered C20. By WB Gingell, sculptor
Robert Mawer. Richly modelled Venetian palazzo style. Ashlar,
wrought-iron balconies, roof not visible. Square plan, on
corner site with Commercial Street (right return).
2 storeys with attic and basement. 3 bays. Vermiculated
rustication to ground floor with more heavily rusticated
plinth, rusticated round-arch doorway with carved tympanum and
flanking Venetian windows in round-arched recesses with
continuous moulded impost and carved head keyblocks.
Retractable metal shutters to ground-floor windows ran in
tracks behind the piers to each window arch. Heavy dentilled
cornice over ground floor with projecting balconies to
1st-floor windows. First floor: giant paired Corinthian
three-quarter columns supporting heavy entablature with
festoons and masks in the frieze, the entablature breaks
forward over the columns. The 1st floor has 3 tall windows
with segmental pediments on console brackets. 3 attic windows
above with paired pilasters between, cornice and balustered
parapet with urns. Left and right returns similar but single
(not paired) columns on first floor.
INTERIOR: good quality contemporary interiors including
Classical plaster doorcases, pilasters and moulded
entablature.
HISTORICAL NOTE: W Bruce Gingell was the chief commercial
architect in Bristol, responsible for banks, warehouses in the
massive 'High Victorian' manner. Millstone grit from 3
different quarries was used in the construction: Bramley Fall
for the heavily vermiculated plinth, Pool Bank for the finely
rusticated ground floor and Venetian windows, and Rawdon Hill
for the 2 upper storeys, columns, entablature and pedimented
window heads. This building predates Gingell's Bristol work
and is one of the first of the new-style commercial buildings
in Leeds; it is noteworthy that it pre-dates the Town Hall.
(Linstrum, D: West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture:
1978-: 20; The Builder, 10 July 1858: 466-467).

Listing NGR: SE3007133556

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26548088

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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