Meanwood Towers

Meanwood Towers is a large house, built in 1867 and converted to 12 flats in the 20th century. It was designed by Edward Welby Pugin for Thomas Stuart Kennedy. The house is constructed of coursed, rock-faced gritstone with ashlar details, and has slate roofs. It is in a High Victorian, Gothic Revival style.

The building is three storeys high, with attics and cellars, and includes a single-storey, five-bay service wing with a projecting octagonal ‘bell turret’. The asymmetrical facade features a buttressed entrance tower with a Gothic arch, attached columns, and an oriel window on deep brackets above. Other features include mullion and transom windows, carved stone detail with gargoyles, deep eaves brackets, copings, finials, and multi-flue stacks that have been partly dismantled. A long, low wing to the right has mullioned windows and a gable with a cusped window, along with a surviving full-height, two-flue ashlar stack. The octagonal bay has louvres and a pointed roof. The rear (south-western) facade is highly elaborate, with four bays; the outer bays are gabled, with bay windows, a balcony, traceried stained-glass windows, and gabled dormers. A left return features a projecting central gabled bay with a tall, canted oriel stair window, quatrefoil tracery, and a four-light transom and mullion window in the apex.

The interior retains original features, including steps to outer double board doors and an inner, elaborate timber and painted-glass screen with a poem or quotation in Gothic lettering. There is a tall, rectangular hall with a galleried landing, nine-panel doors, panelling, overpainted marble columns and Gothic arches to a black marble staircase with a carved stone balustrade and wide pink marble moulded handrail. A narrow staircase with elaborate turned newels rises to the second floor, while stone chamfered arches lead to the upper gallery. The ground-floor rooms have inserted partitions; one retains a large, stone, medieval-style fireplace, while others retain fireplaces and fine stained glass.

Thomas Stuart Kennedy was a machine maker, and the house was originally called 'Carr House'. A Schulze and Sons organ, originally housed in a separate wooden organ house which accommodated 800 people, was moved to St Bartholomew's Church, Armley in 1879.