The Town and Country Club (The O2 Academy)
The O2 Academy, 55, Cookridge Street, Leeds, LS2 3AW
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1375235
- Date first listed:
- 25-Jun-1975
- List Entry Name:
- The Town and Country Club (The O2 Academy)
- Statutory Address:
- The O2 Academy, 55, Cookridge Street, Leeds, LS2 3AW
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2005-09-28
- Reference:
- IOE01/10845/19
- Rights:
- © Mrs Pennie Keech. Source: Historic England Archive
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Official list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1375235
- Date first listed:
- 25-Jun-1975
- Date of most recent amendment:
- 11-Sept-1996
- List Entry Name:
- The Town and Country Club (The O2 Academy)
- Statutory Address 1:
- The O2 Academy, 55, Cookridge Street, Leeds, LS2 3AW
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:
- The O2 Academy, 55, Cookridge Street, Leeds, LS2 3AW
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 29915 34093
Details
This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 05/06/2018
SE3037SE
714-1/74/137
LEEDS
COOKRIDGE STREET (West side)
No. 55, The Town and Country Club (The O2 Academy)
(Formerly listed as The Town and Country Club, COOKRIDGE STREET, previously listed as: COOKRIDGE STREET (West side) Theatre-in-Education and Workshops for Leeds Playhouse)
25/06/75
GV
II
Formerly known as: The Town and Country Club, COOKRIDGE STREET and The Coliseum Theatre COOKRIDGE STREET.
Theatre, now a music venue.1885. By William Bakewell. Ashlar facade, brick to sides and rear, slate roof. Gothic Revival style front of four bays. Central entrance arch enriched with carved foliage, carved panels above with shields of the principal Yorkshire towns of the day; large rose window and panelled parapet with statue of Britannia at the apex. Lower flanking bays have panelled double doors in round arch with stained glass in the fanlight, paired and single round-arched stair windows above; three-light windows with plate tracery and balustraded balcony to upper floor. The bays divided by corbelled buttresses with finials. Gabled outer wings with altered entrances.
INTERIOR: no original features seen at Review; floor levels changed, seating removed, open to roof.
HISTORIC NOTE: Built as the Coliseum Theatre and opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the great hall was described as 'one of the finest in the north of England' (Kelly, 1913) and was the property of Taylor's Drug Company Ltd.
The Coliseum was used for political meetings and it became a site for protests by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester in 1903. Several women were thrown out of the building for disrupting a speech by Liberal MP John Burns in December 1907. In October 1908 when Prime Minister Asquith visited Leeds local suffragettes and leaders of the local unemployed held a large protest meeting outside the Coliseum. Jeanie Baines, a WSPU organiser, urged the crowd to ‘break down the doors’ of the building; she was arrested and became the first woman to be tried by jury for a suffrage offence. When Asquith returned to speak at the Coliseum in November 1913 large numbers of mounted police kept suffragette demonstrators on the other side of the road, and several windows in adjacent buildings were smashed during this protest. The theatre became the Gaumont cinema in 1928, and in the 1960s it became a rehearsal room and workshops for Leeds Playhouse before being turned into a nightclub, and later a music venue in 2008.
This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.
Listing NGR: SE2991534093
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 466117
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Kellys Directory in Leeds, (1913), XXXIII
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 08-Jun-2026 at 13:49:24.
Download a full scale map (PDF)End of official list entry
All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.