18 Crown Point Road, City and Hunslet, Leeds

Summary

Terraced house, built between about 1866 and 1872, architect unknown.

Description

Terraced house, built between about 1866 and 1872, architect unknown.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in irregular English bond (five rows of stretchers to one row of headers) with buff-coloured Millstone Grit ashlar dressings, and originally blue Welsh slate roof coverings (currently covered in corrugated iron).

PLAN: a two-storey terraced house with a basement. A broadly L-shaped plan on a corner site; forming a variation or adaptation on a two-room smaller Victorian villa, the rear rooms being transferred to the sides. The rear elevations are largely blind, with comparatively few openings, probably due to the proximity of neighbouring properties.

EXTERIOR: the north front is a two-bay composition with a large canted bay window on the left and a porch on the right to the ground floor, and then two plain segmental-headed windows to the first-floor. An ashlar plinth runs beneath the windows and around the terrace. The entrance is approached by stone steps and the porch comprises Tuscan columns supporting a frieze, consoles and a moulded cornice. The bay window also has consoles supporting a moulded cornice. All the windows are currently blocked with brick or concrete blocks but behind this recent infill are multi-pane sashes with slender glazing bars. The first-floor window on the right has a sill supported by stone corbels; a stone string course runs across and around the terrace at sill level. There is a hipped roof with deep eaves supported by corbels above a moulded white brick eaves band and nailhead decorative course. A chimney stack rises over the centre of the roof.

The east return onto Sheaf Street is carefully built to form a bullnose or rounded corner. This elevation is three bays wide with a central segmental-headed doorway flanked by segmental-headed windows on the ground-floor and then a further three windows to the first floor; two segmental-headed windows flanking a tall round-headed stair window with a dropped keystone and carved impost blocks. The stone lintels of the ground-floor openings have elaborate floral decoration to the keystones. All the openings are currently blocked but some retain windows behind this recent infill. The south and west elevations, which form the rear aspects of the building, are largely blind, except for a two-storey bathroom extension with a window, added in about the 1890s, and a small inserted window to the first floor, added in about the 1930s.

INTERIOR: the basement contains a small hallway with three rooms leading off it, including the original kitchen which retains the original stone kitchen range surround. The ground floor has an L-shaped entrance hall leading between the main entrance on Crown Point Road, the back door and the service entrance on Sheaf Street. There are two reception rooms, the principal room with mid-C20 timber panelling but missing the chimney piece and most of the lath and plaster ceiling apart from part of the cornice. The second reception room, facing onto Sheaf Street, has a cornice, part of a later dado rail and two fitted C20 alcove cupboards. The chimney breast has been opened up to receive a cooker (now missing) and has plain white tiling. A walk in cupboard and staircase is situated in the hallway but the latter has lost the original column-on-vase balusters and ramped handrail. On the first floor are three bedrooms, a bathroom and a separate lavatory. The main bedroom is plainly plastered, with some surviving plaster cornice, skirtings and architrave but most of the ceiling has collapsed. There is a 1950s tiled fire surround and the timber frame and fanlight of a set of 1930s French doors.

Note: the interior was not inspected and the description is based on internal photographs and a drone survey.

History

Hunslet is now an inner-city area of Leeds immediately south of Leeds City Railway Station, bounded on the north and east by the River Aire. It was a rural village until rapid growth during the C19 as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Hunslet became a major industrial and manufacturing centre, later dubbed the ‘workshop of Leeds’, including mills, foundries, railway and engineering works, a gasworks, chemical works, dye works and leather works, as well as workers' housing. It contributed to Leeds’s status as one of England’s most important commercial and industrial cities, becoming known as ‘the city that made everything’. Industrial expansion went hand-in-hand with an increase in the labour force and the construction of new workers’ housing, especially in the heartland of Leeds bordering the River Aire; the population of Hunslet expanded nearly twelve-fold over the course of the C19. In the 1840s and 1850s, there was a re-planning of the infrastructure in the area. A new river crossing (the second such crossing) was created linking Hunslet to the city at Crown Point Bridge. Two principal streets were laid out; Crown Point Road, extending south-west of the new bridge, and what would become Black Bull Street, extending south of the bridge, both linking to Hunslet Lane. The large triangle of largely open land between these streets passed between several owners before being speculatively divided into smaller plots with a network of subsidiary streets. One of these plots forms the area covered by the current terrace houses. It was advertised in the Leeds Intelligencer on the 21 January 1860 as having extensive frontages to Crown Point Road, Grey Street (now known as Hunslet Road), and an intended street that would become Sheaf Street. In 1862 the area was described in the Leeds Times as ‘one of the most improving parts of the town of Leeds’.

The subject site is shown as vacant, without any houses, on a map of Leeds drawn by B R Davies for the Weekly Dispatch Atlas published in 1863. (It should be noted that the area may have been surveyed some time before the publication date). A map of Leeds produced by W Brierley in 1866 depicts a set of buildings with a rectangular footprint on the corner of Crown Point Road and (what later became) Hunslet Road; the first of these terrace houses. By 1872 the block of houses is shown as broadly L-shaped in footprint, extending to the north-east. The veracity of depictions of individual buildings or houses on these two small-scale maps is uncertain. The first detailed plan of the area is the 1891 Ordnance Survey (OS) map, which depicts all the current dwellings, divided into five separate buildings, including ash pits and outdoor lavatories in the backyards. Addresses and numbering of these properties have varied over time, and multiple addresses have sometimes been given for single properties. The houses were re-numbered in 1901. The rear elevations of the properties gained additional duplicate addresses (as Nos 2 to 10 Sheaf Street) at a later date, which appears to have been either because they were sub-let with multiple occupants or on the assumption that several of the dwellings were back-to-back houses.

18 Crown Point Road is also shown as a single dwelling on the 1891 OS map. It is separated from the adjacent 16 Crown Point Road by a straight joint. The building shares similar architectural detailing to 37 and 39 Hunslet Road, such as the pointed keystones, indicating that it may have been added by the same architect and/or builder. The historic maps indicate that it had been constructed by 1872. A report (Stephen Levant Heritage Architecture, 2018) provides documentary information regarding the former occupants (with the acknowledgement that due to the changing of house numbers and street names, findings dating to the early 1870s could not be substantiated), summarised as follows. In the 1871 census George Ward, a chemist, was living at the property with his wife, three children and a domestic servant. In the mid-1870s the property may have been used together with 16 Crown Point Road as the St Ann’s Cottage lodging house but this use appears to have ceased by the 1880s when there were single families living at the addresses. Later occupants included: Thomas Hawkesworth, a saddler’s ironmonger, and later a currier, in 1881; both Hawkesworth’s family and Arthur Bellhouse in 1900, indicating it had been sub-let; Joseph Yelland, a bricklayer, and his family in 1901; Samuel Tennant, a rag merchant in 1910; William Nicholson, owner of a building company in 1916; and Mrs Brotherton, secretary to the same company in the 1960s, when the house included a meeting room. It remained in use until about the 1980s but became derelict in the 1990s and is currently - 2018 - unoccupied.

Reasons for Listing

18 Crown Point Road, built in about 1866-1872, in Hunslet, Leeds, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as a surviving example of mid to late C19 workers’ housing in Hunslet, a major industrial and manufacturing centre following the Industrial Revolution dubbed the ‘workshop of Leeds’;
* as a well-documented workers’ house with a list of known occupants, including a chemist, saddler’s ironmonger and a currier, professions which are particularly representative of the C19 working population of this important area.

Architectural interest:

* for the plan form as a relatively unusual variation or adaptation on a two-room smaller Victorian villa, the rear rooms being transferred to the sides and the back elevations being largely blind;
* for the external architectural features and detailing, such as the porch with Tuscan columns, floral decorations to the keystones and the well-crafted bullnose east return wall, lifting it above the typical surviving terraced house of this date in this area of the country.

Group value:

* with 16 Crown Point Road, and 37, 39 and 41 Hunslet Road, which form the rest of this distinctive terrace, sharing similar architectural features and also illustrating the development of house plan forms in the mid to late C19.

External Links

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