Emmanuel House (Former Emmanuel Church)

Emmanuel House, formerly Emmanuel Church, stands on Taylor Hill Road. This is a grade II listed building, a former parish church built in 1828–29 by Robert Dawson Chantrell, the Leeds architect, and subsequently converted to a private house in the late 20th century. Chantrell enlarged the chancel in 1849.

The church was constructed from coursed and dressed sandstone with a slate roof to the nave and stone-tile roof to the chancel. It was built almost entirely under the auspices of the 1818 Church Building Act, which funded new churches in growing industrial districts where Anglican worship was scarce. The total cost was £3,147.

The building displays the simple Gothic style characteristic of the early 19th century, enlivened with castellated detail. The plan comprises a tall and wide aisled nave, originally designed to accommodate a three-sided gallery, a west porch, and a lower chancel with south vestry.

The exterior shows embattled gables and parapets on the nave's west and east walls, with clasping polygonal buttresses rising to castellated turrets. The three-bay west front has a wider central bay brought forward, containing a three-light window with Decorated tracery above the porch. The porch entrance has a continuous moulding arch, with doors featuring blind Gothic tracery. The outer bays contain two-light windows. The nave comprises five full buttressed bays with half bays at the west end. The two-light windows throughout display Decorated tracery. The chancel has a three-light east window and two-light north window, also with Decorated tracery.

An inspection in 2003 found the interior retained five-bay arcades with quatrefoil piers of wood and iron and chamfered arches. A plaster ceiling with axial ribs and moulded cross beams on wall shafts covered the nave. The chancel roof was a hammerbeam design. Closed-string stone steps from the porch led to the gallery in the closed half bays at the west end. At that time the building retained a raked three-sided gallery with arcaded front and some box pews. The west window was by Thomas Willement, the north window possibly by Wailes, and a south window by Burne-Jones.

Robert Chantrell (1793–1872) was a pupil of Sir John Soane and established his practice in Leeds in 1819. Between 1823 and 1850 he built no fewer than 25 churches, alongside secular buildings in the Greek Revival style. The chancel enlargement of 1849 was undertaken to accommodate the liturgical requirements of the Anglican Revival.

Emmanuel Church was declared redundant in 1990 and conversion to a private dwelling began in 2001.