Meanwood Towers

LEEDS

SE23NE TOWERS WAY, Meanwood 714-1/6/983 (North West side) 05/08/76 Meanwood Towers (Formerly Listed as: PARKLAND DRIVE, Meanwood Meanwood Towers)

II

Formerly known as: Carr House Meanwood. Large house, now 12 flats. 1867, converted C20. By Edward Welby Pugin for Thomas Stuart Kennedy. Coursed rock-faced gritstone with ashlar details, slate roofs. 3 storeys with attics and cellars, a single-storey 5-bay service wing with projecting octagonal 'bell turret'. In High Victorian, Gothic Revival style. Asymmetrical facade includes buttressed entrance tower with Gothic arch, attached columns, oriel window on deep brackets above, moulded coping; tall gabled bay with mullion and transom windows, carved stone detail includes gargoyles and deep eaves brackets, copings and finials; the multi-flue stacks part dismantled. The long low wing to right has mullioned windows, gable with cusped window, surviving full-height 2-flue ashlar stack; the octagonal bay has louvres and pointed roof. The rear (SW) facade very elaborate: 4 bays, the outer bays gabled, with bay windows, balcony, traceried stained-glass windows, gabled dormers. Left return: projecting central gabled bay with tall canted oriel stair window, quatrefoil tracery, 4-light transom and mullion window in apex. INTERIOR: original features include: steps up through the porch to outer double board doors; inner elaborate timber and painted-glass screen with poem/quotation in Gothic lettering. Rectangular tall inner hall with galleried landing, 9-panel doors, panelling, overpainted marble columns and Gothic arches to black marble staircase with carved stone balustrade and wide pink marble moulded handrail. Balustrade with chamfered rails to landing, doors opening off; a narrow staircase with elaborate turned newels rises on the NE side to the 2nd floor; stone chamfered arches to upper gallery, part blocked. The ground-floor rooms examined have inserted partitions, one retains a large stone medieval-style fireplace. Other rooms retain fireplaces and much fine stained glass. Thomas Stuart Kennedy was a machine maker; the house was originally 'Carr House'. An organ built by Schulze and Sons of Paulinzelle, Germany for his wife was housed in a separate wooden organ house which seated 800 people; it was moved to St Bartholomew's Church, Armley in 1879 (qv). (Linstrum D: West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture: London: 1978-: 85, 116; Linstrum D: The Historic Architecture of Leeds: 1969-: 78; Hopwood WA & Casperson FP: Meanwood; Village, Valley, Industry and People: 1986-: 68).

Listing NGR: SE2916037866