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
