Ford House (Leeds Girls High School)

Ford House, now part of Leeds Girls' High School, is a pair of semi-detached houses originally known as Buckingham Villas, built in the late 19th century for Mrs C Kirk and Mr J Kirk. They stand on Buckingham Road in Headingley. The houses are constructed of coursed squared rock-faced gritstone with ashlar detailing, topped with a blue slate gabled roof featuring fishscale slates to the turrets. Designed in the Gothic Revival style, the pair presents a symmetrical appearance, with eight bays and entrances in bays two and seven. The projecting entrance bays rise as square turrets, featuring half-glazed double doors and a cusped traceried fanlight above a round-arched opening flanked by columns. Ornate terracotta plaques, bearing the initials ‘CK’ and ‘JK’, are positioned between the first-floor and attic windows. The external details include brick corbel and eaves bands, and pyramid roofs topped with wrought-iron finials. The windows are primarily plate-glass sashes, with some altered to top-hinged casements; square bay windows with pierced quatrefoil balustrades are found in bays 1, 4, 5, and 8 on the ground floor, although the central pair may have originally lacked the cusped heads visible in other ground-floor and first-floor windows. Gabled attic windows with wrought-iron finials are present on bays 1, 4, 5, and 8. A continuous moulded band runs along the first floor. Tall corniced stacks are positioned between bays 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. The left and right returns feature elaborate three-light stair windows with quatrefoil tracery and stained glass.

The interior has undergone alterations to accommodate the school, including the removal of walls and the partitioning of rooms. However, the original layout, with principal south-facing rooms separated from service rooms by a corridor, remains discernible. Significant interior features include elaborate wooden Gothic-style staircases with pierced balustrades and brass handrails, a tiled floor in the stair hall – using blue, brown, and white tiles, possibly Minton – doors with four chamfered panels, ceiling cornices in the principal rooms on both the ground and first floors, notably a deeply-moulded bracketed cornice in the entrance hall, and decorative ceiling roses in several rooms. A single-storey top-lit bay to the rear, likely a former billiard room, features an elaborate timber roof. To the rear, terrace steps flanked by low stone walls with chamfered copings extend beyond the public footpath. The steps are further distinguished by elaborate balustrades with quatrefoil piercings and terminals with stepped pyramid capstones. Historic records from the 1886 Directory identify the original occupants as Mrs C Kirk and Mr John Kirk, a stover and dyer.