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

User submitted image — Uploaded by Information Analysis This photo may not represent the current condition of the site. Almost 350,000 images and stories have been added to the Missing Pieces Project so far. Share your story.
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Images of England Project

To view this image please use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Edge.

Archive image, may not represent current condition of site.

Date:: 2005-09-28
Reference:: IOE01/10845/19
Rights:: © Mrs Pennie Keech. Source: Historic England Archive

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

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-Sep-1996
List Entry Name:: The Town and Country Club (The O2 Academy)
Statutory Address 1:: The O2 Academy, 55, Cookridge Street, Leeds, LS2 3AW

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

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.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

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.