University Of Leeds School Of Education

The University of Leeds School of Education, located at 8 and 9 Hillary Place, is a house built in 1872 for T.W. Harding. It features red brick in Flemish bond, a rock-faced stone plinth, and ashlar details, topped with a slate roof that has a truncated central stack. The building stands three stories tall on a corner site, with a four-bay facade facing Hillary Place, where the left entrance bay is recessed. The Cavendish Road facade has three bays, a central entrance, and a recessed semicircular bay set back on the right.

The Hillary Place facade includes steps leading up to paired half-glazed doors with etched glass, a plain fanlight, and an ashlar round arch with a bracketed cornice and blocking piece. The windows are cross-frame casements with stone architraves, featuring segmental heads on the ground and second floors. The first floor has more elaborate detailing, including a moulded sill band, bracketed sills, and deep cornices above tiled entablatures, with a segmental pediment on the far left. The eaves cornice is bracketed and dentilled, with a blocking course.

On the Cavendish Road facade, the entrance mirrors that of Hillary Place, with elaborate ground-floor fenestration that includes a semicircular bay window on the left and a three-light pedimented window on the right, both adorned with a blue tiled band below the cornice. The detailing on the first, second floors, and eaves matches that of the Hillary Place facade.

Inside, the Hillary Place entrance features a modillion ceiling cornice, an oval stairwell, and a substantial wooden staircase with column-on-vase balusters and a wide ramped handrail. The Cavendish Road entrance leads into a narrow lobby with a modillion cornice and a round arch decorated with pelican and foliage motifs. The staircase here has a lion-mask terminal and a wrought-iron balustrade with scrolls, ivy-leaf, and flower motifs.

T.W. Harding, who established the Tower Works in Globe Road for manufacturing steel combing and carding pins in the early 1860s, sold the house to the University in 1958.