Armley Prison: Inner Range
ARMLEY PRISON: INNER RANGE, GLOUCESTER TERRACE
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1256249
- Date first listed:
- 05-Aug-1976
- List Entry Name:
- Armley Prison: Inner Range
- Statutory Address:
- ARMLEY PRISON: INNER RANGE, GLOUCESTER TERRACE
Location
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1256249
- Date first listed:
- 05-Aug-1976
- List Entry Name:
- Armley Prison: Inner Range
- Statutory Address 1:
- ARMLEY PRISON: INNER RANGE, GLOUCESTER TERRACE
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- ARMLEY PRISON: INNER RANGE, GLOUCESTER TERRACE
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Leeds (Metropolitan Authority)
- Parish:
- Non Civil Parish
- National Grid Reference:
- SE 27956 33352
Details
LEEDS
SE2733 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, Armley 714-1/33/487 (West side) 05/08/76 Armley Prison: inner range
GV II*
Inner range to prison, containing offices, chapel, cells. 1847, altered C20. By William Belton Perkin and Elisha Backhouse; S wing extended 1857. Ashlar, edge-tooled quoins, brick internal skin with rubble infill, slate roofs. Castle style. The complex contains former board rooms and offices, chapel, cells in 4 radiating arms. Opposite the entrance archway (qv) is the tall 2-stage block with central corridor and former lodgings, Prison Board meeting rooms: former round-arched entrance originally reached by a flight of stone steps. These steps removed, entrance archway reduced in height, decorative wrought-iron grille inserted. Deeply-recessed round window in roll-moulding above, flanking lancet windows, clock and 3 lancets above, stone brackets and embattled parapets. Behind this block a tall pitched-roof range with chapel on upper floor: 6 bays, underceiled and re-ordered, 3 paired windows each side, chamfered chancel arch, west gallery with panelled benches. To W again a taller semicircular tower with rectangular turret, corbelled embattled parapet. Central well and 4 radiating wings of 4 storeys with small paired round-arched windows, iron bars, embattled parapet on corbels and square corner turrets with arrow-loops; in end wall a 3-storey canted bay window lighting the galleries; over the centre of each wing a large octagonal ventilation tower. INTERIOR: central well has spiral staircases to galleries with stone cantilevered landings, straight-flight stairs, balustrades; the wings open to the vaulted roofs. Extensive refurbishment in progress at time of survey, but some original cells survive with studded metal-lined doors, recess in wall alongside and wooden corner shelf suggesting a serving hatch. HISTORICAL NOTE: by the early C19 the treatment of prisoners was beginning to include an emphasis on correction as well as punishment. The prison system generally adopted was that of solitary confinement for most of the day, the prisoner 'thinking over' his problems. The panopticon system of the late C18 was developed into the radial plan seen at Armley: many individual cells in separate wings projecting from a central core, each wing having a central top-lit corridor. Armley closely follows the arrangement of Pentonville Prison,
London, by Joshua Jebb, 1840-42 and published in The Builder in 1847, but here the monumental entrance block is not linked to the inner complex. Rapkin's map of 1850 shows the original plan of the 'New Borough Goal' and has a vignette depicting the prison with driveway from Armley Road, then the Leeds and Stanningley Road. (Dixon, R & Muthesius, S: Victorian Architecture: London: 1978-: 114; Rapkin: Map of Leeds: 1850-).
Listing NGR: SE2795633352
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 465098
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Dixon, R, Muthesius, S, Victorian Architecture, (1978), 114
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 25-Jun-2026 at 17:09:51.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
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