Sugarwell Court

Sugarwell Court is a former tannery, now student accommodation, located on Meanwood Road in Leeds. It was originally built in 1866 for Edward Kitchen, with additions dating to around 1900 and conversion to its current use in approximately 1993. The building is constructed of rusticated sandstone with ashlar dressings, and has a C20 slate roof. It comprises two ranges forming an L-shape, with three storeys over a basement near Meanwood Beck. The entrance range has 24 bays, and the roadside range has 23 bays.

The front of the building has a plinth and pilasters between the bays. These pilasters rise from a band to support a band and modillion cornice. The lower-floor windows have moulded sills and monolithic cambered-arched lintels, although the window frames have been replaced. The third-floor windows are wider, with round-arched glazing bars in the top lights and segmental-arched lintels, separated by pilasters. A three-bay entrance, located in bays 5-7, features a round-arched carriageway with a moulded archivolt and a keystone bearing the date and a scrolled shield with a bird-head crest. Above the carriageway, a window is set slightly higher than the other first-floor windows. Pedestrian doors, flanked by pulvinated surrounds, are located to either side of the carriageway, each with a cambered-arched overlight. Eaves gutter brackets feature on the building, and a modillion cornice runs along the ridge stack above the entrance.

The interior features central rows of circular cast-iron columns supporting timber cross-beams. The first-floor columns are more slender than those on the ground floor. A broad flight of stone stairs rises to the upper floor at the south end of the roadside range.

Historically, Edward Kitchen began tanning in 1854 and moved to this site, then known as the Cliff Tannery, after constructing 63 back-to-back houses for his workers. The tannery produced a Leeds speciality, "East India Kips," alongside Cape and Sidney Butts. Skins were dried on the top floor, and softened and soaked in water and lime in the rear glazed yard. Water was drawn from a roadside well and pumped from Meanwood Beck. Leeds was a significant tanning centre in the 19th century, second only to London by the 1850s, and Sugarwell Court is one of the best-surviving mid-19th century examples of a tannery.