Thoresby Building With Attached Railings And Gates

The Thoresby Building, along with its attached railings and gates, is a former pupil teachers’ college and school, later converted to offices. It was constructed in 1900 by Walter Samuel Braithwaite for the Leeds School Board and converted in 1994-5 by Leeds Design Consultancy. The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and a slate roof. It is four storeys high. The principal facade, facing east, has five uneven bays. The facades facing Rossington Street and Great George Street each have three bays, with three, six, and three windows respectively. The building is designed in a Classical style.

The Rossington Street facade features Corinthian pilasters and a deep cornice below the top storey, which has five-light Diocletian windows. Carved gables are present, bearing the letters "AD" and the date "1900" within oval plaques. The Great George Street facade is similar, with stone carving to the gables. The east front incorporates entrances with stone surrounds, Diocletian windows, and carved gables to the first and fifth bays, and projecting square-section turrets with Ionic pilasters, louvred ventilators, a modillion cornice, and ogee roofs to the second and fourth bays. The interior has not been inspected.

Subsidiary features consist of wrought-iron railings and double gates with pointed finials to Rossington Street, set behind a low brick wall with square-section piers and segmental pedimented capstones, linked to the playground boundary at the western end. A similar, shorter length of wall with gate piers and gates is present on the south side of the yard.

The building originally opened as a Pupil Teachers’ College in 1901, accommodating 600 students. It later became the Thoresby High School in 1909, before being amalgamated with the City of Leeds School in 1972. Historical records indicate there were ten classrooms on the ground floor, ten on the first floor opening onto a balcony, eight art rooms on the upper floors, and four manual workshops and two cookery kitchens in the basement.