Field Head

Field Head is a large house, now offices, built around 1844 with an early 20th-century added bay window. It was constructed for James Hare, a Leeds clothier. The building is constructed of well-coursed punch-dressed stone with a Welsh blue-slate roof.

The house is designed in Jacobean Revival style and comprises two storeys with attics. The front elevation is dominated by a 3-bay, 3-gabled facade with a central porch. This porch features a tall pointed-arched doorway with hoodmould and double-doors flanked by octagonal corner columns with tall finials. The parapet is carried round three sides and pierced by ovals. Above the porch entrance sits a sash window with plain stone surrounds set within a small shaped gable complete with hoodmould and ball finial; within this gable is a lozenge-shaped window. The flanking bays are slightly set forward and include sill bands, tall windows with raised stone surrounds, and smaller attic windows in the apex of coped gables with kneelers and finials. A 2-storey canted bay was added to the left in the early 20th century. Tall rendered stacks with octagonal chimney pots flank the central bay on either side.

The rear elevation features a coped gable with finials and a stack on the right pitch, while the lower wing has an external gable stack. The right-hand return is faced in ashlar with a plinth, continuing sill bands from the front across five bays of windows arranged as on the front elevation, with a coped gable and finials over the centre three bays. A set-back wing contains two windows with projecting wooden frames on brackets—one 2-light and one 3-light with small-paned casements—and two further windows above (one single-light and one 3-light). A stack sits to the rear roof pitch of this wing.

The interior is notable for its fine decorative schemes. A deep entrance hall features a Jacobean-style ribbed plaster ceiling and a semicircular arch with architrave, keystone and impost that leads to an open-string dog-leg stair with two turned balusters to each riser and an oak ramped handrail. At the foot of the stair, an arched doorway with architrave, keystone and spandrels opens into an oak-panelled passage that leads to the Oak Room.

The Oak Room is lined with oak-panelled walls of early 17th-century origin (re-used), featuring pilasters with finely-carved strapwork and a fluted frieze. It contains a Victorian Tudor-arched stone fireplace carved with strapwork and wide oak floorboards. A fine plaster Jacobean-style ceiling features strapwork filled with vine-leaf ornament.

Other rooms open from the entrance hall, each with differing character. A mahogany door with six raised-and-fielded panels leads into an elegant Queen Anne-style dining-room. This well-proportioned space features curved walls with shell-motif heads flanking a fireplace with engaged fluted Tuscan columns and dentil cornice, and a marble inner surround. Above and to either side are red deal panelled walls with large raised-and-fielded panels, carved skirtings, a dado rail and a casement-moulded cornice with egg-and-dart ornament. The room has a parquet-wood floor.

An east-facing Georgian-style sitting-room can be opened through to an adjacent room to form a large conference-room. The sitting-room features a large fireplace with fluted Roman Ionic columns, a frieze carved with swags of fruit and bold cornice, walls formed with large moulded panels, a decorative cornice and a plaster ceiling with a large panel featuring an oak and acorn border and a central boss with flowers and leaves in high relief.