West Leeds High School

West Leeds High School, Whingate, Armley

School building, constructed 1906-1907, designed by William Broadbent, architect to the Leeds Education Department. The building was altered in the late twentieth century.

The structure is built in ashlar and red brick with ashlar dressings and has graduated slate roofs. It follows a double pile plan with 2 and 3 storeys plus basement. The main façade is symmetrical with 26 bays, organised according to the rhythm A,A,B,C,D,C,B,A,A. This comprises 2-storey-with-basement, 3:3-bay blocks flanking the taller 3-storey-with-basement central block, which itself is articulated as 3:2:4:2:3 bays, with sections B and D breaking forward.

The central block has a rusticated ashlar basement and ground floor. Sections are defined by rusticated ashlar pilasters. The 1st-floor bays are defined by attached ashlar Ionic columns, with ashlar sill and lintel bands and dentil work. Cornices run along the 1st and 2nd floors. Sections C feature portals with steps up to porches; each porch has paired Ionic capitals supporting entablatures with dentil cornices broken by keyed segmental arches under segmental pediments with blocking courses. Inside the porches are tessellated floors and panelled, half-glazed double doors with side-lights and relief-carved wooden over-panels.

The windows are large, though later twentieth-century glazing has been installed. Section D has 2 triple basement windows and narrower side windows, with 2 Venetian windows to the ground floor. These are echoed by the ground-floor windows of section C, which are 2-light with segmental overlights. All have ashlar above incised with voussoirs running into coursing. On the 2nd floor of section D are 2 three-light windows under segmental-arched friezes and keyed archivolts. Over the central windows of sections B and outer A are keystones rising into broken segmental pediments. Parapets to sections A, B and D are partly balustraded.

The central and outer blocks each sit under separate hipped roofs, each topped with a ridge cupola featuring open, round-arched, colonnetted sides, a leaded ogee roof and finials. The central cupola is larger and more ornate, with a weather vane.

The rear elevation is plainer but echoes the front's rhythm. Section C has round arches over its narrower upper windows. The 6-bay section D has 2 of its upper windows rising through the eaves under segmental pediments. Sections B have dentil cornices arching over single upper windows set in raised brick panels. Two-tier flat-roofed projections (former observation galleries) extend from section D; single-storey flat-roofed projections (former changing rooms, altered) extend from bays B. The returns feature 3 wide bays echoing the front, with 5 tall, segment-arched basement windows and single, large central windows above, corniced on the ground floor. A dentil cornice rises as a central segmental pediment; the parapet is continuous.

Internally, the entrances and corridors are lined with glazed green tiles (with later painted tiling in places). Segmental-arched recesses frame doors and windows. The floors are reinforced concrete. Stone dogleg stairs have spiked and knob-finialled iron balusters. The main hall features a coffered ceiling with decorative borders to the panels.

The school was designed to accommodate 400 boys and 400 girls, following the most up-to-date planning principles and constructional techniques of the period, drawing on Continental (particularly Swiss) examples. It was the first school in Leeds to have all its floors constructed in reinforced concrete, representing a notable advance in contemporary school design.