John Taylor Teachers Centre

John Taylor Teachers' Centre

A house, now teachers' centre, built around 1857 by John Fox for Robert Ellershaw on Headingley Lane in Leeds. The building was originally called Spring Bank and underwent significant additions and alterations: in 1877–78 by C.R. Chorley for James Kitson, and in 1885–86 by William Thorp for William Harvey. Further alterations were made in the 20th century.

The building is constructed of rock-faced sandstone with gritstone dressings and has a graduated Welsh slate roof. Originally L-shaped in plan with the entrance on the south front, it features a bay extension at the southeast corner and a large addition of 1885–86 in the northwest angle. The design is in Jacobethan style, rising to two storeys with basement and attics.

The exterior displays characteristic features including a plinth, quoins, mullioned and transomed windows with stopped hoodmoulds on the original sections, a first-floor string course, curvilinear shaped gables with ashlar coping and finials, and offset quoined chimneys with multiple octagonal flues. The four-bay entrance front features a single-storey castellated buttressed porch at the second bay with a moulded pointed-arched entrance, decorative tessellated floor, and inner four-panel double door in a quoined surround. Above is a single-light window. The third bay projects slightly under a gable with a four-light window under a three-light oriel (both later insertions) and a single-light attic window. An 1877–78 two-storey castellated bay occupies the right bay with three-light and two-light windows. The garden front (left return) has four bays; the two on the left (additions of 1885–86) include a bay with a segmental-arched moulded doorway under a squat window with blind ogee-arched top lights, beside a transomless two-light window with a three-light window above. The gabled right bay projects slightly, with six lights to the ground floor flanked by attached pilasters supporting an oriel. Of the original right-hand bays, the projecting one features a two-storey castellated bay window (now with a door on the ground floor and without mullions and transoms) and a single-light attic window. The wider left bay has an added ashlar castellated canted bay window with steps down to a central door; the first floor has a former three-light window flanked by single-light windows and a roof dormer. The rear elevation has four bays stepping forward with two under gables and two oriels. The right return has three bays with an added projecting bay on the left.

The interior retains from the original build a wooden closed-string open-well stair with octagonal balusters and castellated newels, four-panel doors with bolection-moulded architraves and pulvinated friezes in principal rooms, panelling, and moulded cornices, some with egg-and-dart motifs (possibly later additions). Around 1880, A. Heaton undertook work to the hall and principal rooms, including Adam-style decorative plasterwork to the soffits and jambs of various arches and openings. The 1885–86 additions include a fine painted and stained-glass stair window and lantern with a porch overlight by Messrs Powell Bros., and notably fine tiled fireplaces in the principal rooms. The tiles are by William de Morgan, an associate of William Morris and his circle. Five fireplaces survive in total, each with polished stone fenders, iron grates, and elaborate wood and stone architraves. The tiles display different colour-schemes and themes: in the former breakfast room (front left) pink-on-white animal, bird and flower designs; in the former dining room (rear left) green-on-white ships and ferny flowers; in the former drawing room (front right) blue and green-on-white foliage with peacock and lizard side panels; in the stair hall red-on-white leaf patterns with a sunflower frieze in the architrave; and in the former principal bedroom (first floor, front right) sunflowers with a panel of dancing children in the architrave.

Originally named Spring Bank, the house was the home of James Kitson from around 1871 to 1885. Kitson was a locomotive manufacturer, leader of the Leeds Liberal Association, and the first Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1896–97; William Gladstone stayed here in 1881. Kitson was followed by William Harvey, a notable local Quaker, who lived there from 1885 to 1892, and then by Charles F. Tetley of the brewing company, a Conservative and Lord Mayor in 1897.