Moorfield House

LEEDS

SE2736SE ALMA ROAD, Headingley 714-1/61/718 (North side) 17/10/73 No.11 Moorfield House

GV II

House, now architects' offices. 1855/56, restored 1979-80. For William Glover Joy. Coursed squared gritstone and ashlar, ornate slate roof with fish-scale pattern. 2 storeys and basements and 3-storey large octagonal tower on right. In Tudor Gothic Revival style. Main facade faces E; 6 first-floor windows, the third in a projecting canted bay with projecting single-storey porch, possibly an addition. The porch has 4-centred arch doorway with 3 cusped lights over, in architrave carved with crouching dogs and a deep hoodmould with male and female heads in the stops; octagonal corner turrets rise to cornice with traceried panels and tall ogee domes with crocketed finials linked by embattled parapet with small gable over central plaque with shield. The main range has tall windows with restored cross frames, hoodmoulds, moulded string course, embattled parapet and octagonal spire above entrance bay; tall Tudor-style chimneys with 2 or 3 octagonal shafts each. Tower right has Gothic traceried ground-floor windows, machicolated and embattled parapet with gargoyles and with attached octagonal stair turret with short spire. INTERIOR: hall with stone cusped arches on polished granite columns, wrought-iron balusters to open-well stairs. Gothic Revival vaulted octagonal chapel and rooms with Tudor arched panelling and ceilings with pendants. HISTORICAL NOTE: 1856-77 the Glover Joy Family (William was mayor of Leeds in 1869); 1877-c1885 Samuel Smith, tanner and currier of Meanwood; c1885 re-acquired by the Joy family; 1891 sold to John Carr Nicholson, dry salter and manufacturing chemist; 1936 bought for »1,650 by Elsie Thackrah of Harrogate and became the Moorfield House Missionary College (the grounds to E sold for 'Moorfield Estate' housing); 1939-44 taken over by Secretary of State for Air as wartime administration offices; 1944-73 Automobile Association regional offices, additions to rear; 1979 extensively refurbished for use by Fletcher Ross and Hickling, now Fletcher Joseph partnership, architects. (Michael Devenish (Fletcher Joseph Partnership) pers. comm.).

Listing NGR: SE2799136438