Ashwood

Ashwood is a house, now converted into flats, built around 1836 and altered in the early 20th century. It was likely designed by John Child for Joseph Austin. The building is constructed of ashlar stone with a concealed roof and has two storeys above a basement. The entrance facade faces east and features three bays in a Tudor style, characterized by Perpendicular-style tracery and hoodmoulds over the windows.

The facade includes a plinth and a central gabled entrance bay that projects outward. This bay contains a six-panel door with an overlight set in a shallow ogee arch, which also has a hoodmould. Above the door is an oriel window, and octagonal buttresses rise as moulded and castellated chimneys. The outer bays have two blind windows on the ground floor and two 2-light windows on the first floor to the left. To the right, there is a projecting 2-light bay window on the ground floor and two 2-light windows on the first floor. The building features a moulded string course at the first-floor sill and eaves levels, along with a moulded blocking course and tall moulded chimney stacks.

The left return of the building has two canted bay windows on the ground floor and four first-floor windows similar to the front. The right return includes a projecting two-window wing and an added oriel window.

Inside, there is an octagonal entrance hall with two crocketed niches and an archway leading to an octagonal stair hall, which has rooms branching off. The stair hall features a possibly early 20th-century blue and white mosaic floor, turned balusters, and a top-lit ceiling. The interior includes six-panel doors, some with arched top panels, and Art Nouveau-style stained glass in several windows, along with shutters. The ceiling cornice in the front right room has a vine motif, while the rear right room retains remnants of an original plaster ceiling adorned with bands of Tudor roses and a cornice, as well as a likely early 20th-century panelled dado, door, and a fireplace made of large green marble slabs.

Joseph Austin, the original owner, was a wool stapler and a prominent Roman Catholic, and John Child, the architect, was also a fellow Catholic who later engaged in house building in the Headingley area. Joseph's son, Alfred Austin, who served as poet laureate from 1896 to 1913, lived in this house during his childhood from 1835 to 1857.