Kirkstall Brewery Student Village

Kirkstall Brewery Student Village

A maltings converted to a brewery and now student accommodation, located on the north side of Broad Lane in Kirkstall, Leeds. The buildings date from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, originally developed by Joseph Musgrove. The complex underwent significant alterations and additions: in 1833–47 under Thomas Walker, in 1847–69 for Benjamin Dawson and Company, from 1869 to 1954 under the Kirkstall Brewing Company, and from 1954 to 1983 under Whitbread and Co. The site was converted to a student village for Leeds Metropolitan University in 1994.

The structures are built of coursed squared gritstone, some with herring-bone tooling, with some 20th-century brickwork. Roofs are of slate with some corrugated iron, felting and metal sheeting.

The complex has an L-shaped plan, with a tower brewery, yard entrance and office range facing Broad Lane to the south, and brewery workshop and warehouse ranges running parallel to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the east. 20th-century additions occupy the angle between them.

The Broad Lane façade features a 3-storey, 3 by 2-bay tower brewery on the left with a chamfered plinth. Each bay is treated as a giant segmental-arched recess containing paired windows with segmental-arched lintels, some blind. A round-arched cart entrance sits on the left return. The tower has a moulded string, ashlar cornice and balustraded parapet. A circular tapering chimney rises from the southwest corner, and the corner bays below project slightly with blind windows. The hipped roof is of green slate with skylights and ridge louvres.

The lower half of the tower is obscured by a stone range on the roadside, raised to 2 storeys in the 20th century and rendered. On the left return to the rear stands a gabled bay with a round-arched loading door on the left, square windows, and central loading doors to the 1st and 2nd floors.

The remaining Broad Lane frontage, from left to right, comprises: a single-storey bay with a square window in plain surround and louvred ridge; a 3-window gabled bay with blocked 2-light and square windows (boarded up) and a keyed oculus in the coped gable; an ashlar entrance bay with raised lintel, modillion cornice, blocking course and hipped roof; and a 3-bay office range on the far right, 2 storeys facing the road but 3 storeys towards the canal. This range has rusticated ashlar quoins, plinth and sill bands, and a late 19th-century ashlar porch with double doors and fanlight, cusped side lights and modillion cornice. The windows are paired tall sashes on the left with smaller examples to the right and at 1st-floor centre and right, though the sash frames have been replaced with 20th-century casements. An ashlar gable coping is present on the right, with corniced end stacks.

A low stone wall supporting iron railings with spiked bars and a scalloped top rail runs from the porch to the entrance bay on the left, and extends to a canal bridge on the right.

The right return, facing the canal, comprises several ranges. Starting from the left is the gable end of the office range with two first-floor windows. Next is a twin-gabled late 18th to early 19th-century 3-storey range of 3 bays, with altered and blocked flat-faced mullion windows to the lower floor. Upper windows have plain stone surrounds and raised sills, mostly inserted, with bands at 1st-floor, 1st-floor lintel and eaves levels. The gables are ashlar-coped.

A 4-storey, 9-bay range follows, with plinth to the lower 2 floors, small round-arched windows and a blocked doorway on the left. Flat-headed, stone-lintelled windows are above, and the next floor is raised at different times: the right-hand part has taller windows set under the eaves with grouped gutter brackets between, while the 3 left bays sit under a gable with attic window and ashlar coping, separated from the rest by a straight joint.

A substantial 4-storey, 20-bay range has small round-arched windows on sill bands at ground level, with blocked round-arched ground-floor doorways at either end opening to the canal. Plain gutter brackets support a 2-span roof. The rear yard surface is higher than the canal, and this range consequently displays 2 tiers of round-arched windows with a sill band. Wide loading doors at ground level break the sill band of the lower windows.

To the right of this is a 2-storey, 4-window range with blocked round-arched openings low down and a brick upper storey. Further right are a wide and a narrow round-arched opening, with stone steps leading down to cellars below yard level.

Interior: The building was gutted of plant following the brewery's 1983 closure, but original structural supports remain, including squat circular cast-iron columns supporting riveted cast-iron girders on the 1st floor on the canal side. The 4-bay range originally had a further lower storey exposed on the yard (west) side, but this was blocked off when the yard level was raised, forming a cellar. This lower storey was excavated and revealed in 1994.

Historical Note: In 1793, Henry Cooper and Joseph Musgrove leased 2 plots from Sir James Graham. Henry Cooper built maltings, a wharf, Cooper House for himself and Poplar House for his maltster. Joseph Musgrove also built maltings, cottages and Grove House. From 1814 to 1832, the maltings were operated by Ephraim Elsworth. In 1833, Thomas Walker purchased them and converted them to a brewery, but he died bankrupt in 1844, and Simeon Musgrove sold out to Benjamin Dawson and Co. Considerable building expansion occurred between 1847 and 1869, including the construction of the 20-bay range. In 1872, the Kirkstall Brewery Company acquired the site and built the tower brewery. By 1898, the business had developed a huge international trade using the canal system and steamship transport from Goole. The business was taken over by Duttons of Blackpool in 1936, acquired by Whitbreads in 1954, and closed in 1983.