Ashwood

LEEDS

SE2835NE HEADINGLEY LANE, Headingley 714-1/65/766 (North East side) 08/05/73 No.48 Ashwood

GV II

House, now flats. c1836, altered early C20. Probably by John Child for Joseph Austin. Ashlar, roof concealed. 2 storeys over basement, E-facing entrance facade of 3 bays. Tudor style with Perpendicular-style tracery and hoodmoulds to windows. Plinth. Central gabled entrance bay projects: 6-panel door with overlight in shallow ogee arch with hoodmould, oriel window above; octagonal buttresses rise as moulded and castellated chimneys. Outer bays: 2 blind windows to ground floor and two 2-light windows to 1st floor left; a projecting 2 light bay window ground floor and two 2-light 1st-floor windows to right. Moulded string at 1st-floor sill and eaves levels; moulded blocking course, tall moulded stacks. Left return: 2 canted bay windows to ground floor, 4 first-floor windows as front. Right return: a projecting 2-window wing and added oriel window. INTERIOR: octagonal entrance hall with two 4-centred arched crocketed niches and archway to octagonal stair hall with rooms off, ?early C20 blue and white mosaic floor, turned balusters to stairs which are top lit, coved ceiling. 6-panel doors, some with arched top panels, Art Nouveau-style stained glass in several windows, shutters; ceiling cornice with vine motif to front right, remains of original plaster ceiling with bands of Tudor roses and cornice in rear right which also has probably early C20 panelled dado, door and fireplace of large green marble slabs. Joseph Austin was a woolstapler and prominent Roman Catholic; John Child was a fellow Catholic who later speculated in house building in the Headingley area. Joseph's son Alfred Austin, poet laureate 1896-1913, lived here as a child 1835-57. (Douglas, J (Victorian Society) pers. comm.).

Listing NGR: SE2863935742