Waterloo House North East Range of White Cloth Hall With Assembly Rooms Over

Details

LEEDS

SE3033SW CROWN STREET 714-1/78/146 (East side) 05/08/76 Waterloo House, north-east range of White Cloth Hall with Assembly Rooms over (Formerly Listed as: CROWN STREET Assembly Rooms, Waterloo House)

GV II*

North-east range of cloth hall with assembly rooms over, now shopping arcade. Opened 1777, altered c1865 and c1920. Rendered red brick, stone details, slate roof. 2 storeys, part 3 storeys, part with inserted 3rd floor. Assembly Street elevation (originally facing Cloth Hall courtyard): 15 bays, formerly a further 2 on right demolished to make way for viaduct of North East Railway. Probably formerly a symmetrical composition of 1:7:1:7:1 bays, central bay projecting and outer bays forming the west and east wings of the Cloth Hall. Wider central bay under pediment has 1st-floor Venetian windows with three-quarter Tuscan columns, cornice and archivolt broken by voussoirs. 1st-floor plat band and arcade with lunette windows, sills and impost bands. Ground floor: a round-arched glazed arcade, small-pane windows with glazing bars. West wing of the Cloth Hall demolished (left end), wide doorway to bay 1 was originally an internal access; inserted window to left, inserted doorways to bays 10, 14 and 15. Modillion eaves cornice. Parapet. Rear, ground floor: round-arched blind arcade with imposts; first floor: irregular line of windows, some possibly original, lunettes above, dentil eaves band. Left return: original entrance to Assembly Rooms remodelled c1920, single-storey entrance bays added. INTERIOR: extensive C18 details survive despite demolition of east end c1865 and remodelling at west end c1920. Ground floor, former Cloth Hall rooms, not inspected; upper floor Assembly Rooms: ante-room at west end has moulded cornice with swag frieze; main hall: capitals richly decorated with urn and paterae motifs and supporting vaulting over lunette windows indicate position of missing full-height columns; soffits of lunette reveals decorated with linked circles of husks; parts of panel mouldings survive; dentilled cornice; ceiling divided into sections with scrolled and circular motifs, floral-decorated roundels and corner fans. All plasterwork of

a high standard, appropriate to a high status public building. A small separate SE room has a C20 reproduction of an C18 fireplace and dumb waiter. Floors supported by cross-strutted joists. HISTORICAL NOTE: the Assembly Rooms were a popular focus for the merchant class of the city in the C18-C19, containing a ballroom, gaming and refreshment rooms. These new apartments replaced the Old Assembly Rooms in the Cloth Hall, Nos.99-101 Kirkgate (qv). The opening ceremony was performed by Sir George Saville and Lady Effingham in the presence of over 200 of Leeds' most important citizens. The courtyard side of the range is thought to have been originally an open colonnade supporting the Assembly Rooms, the wall line of the narrower ground-floor Cloth Hall range matching the width of the west range (qv). The arrangement of an open colonnade to the ground floor is similar to that at the earlier Hall. A photograph of the Assembly Rooms (Burt and Grady, p.30) shows the missing attached balustrade at first-floor level; the design is very similar to work by John Carr, in particular Castlegate House, York, 1762-63. (Burt, S & Grady, K: The Merchants' Golden Age: Leeds 1700-1790: 1987-; ).

Listing NGR: SE3045633370

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

466182

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Burt, , Grady, , The Merchants Golden Age Leeds 1700-1790, (1987)

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