Ford House (Leeds Girls High School)

LEEDS

SE2835NW BUCKINGHAM ROAD, Headingley 714-1/64/723 (East side) 04/07/96 Ford House (Leeds Girls' High School)

GV II

Formerly known as: Buckingham Villas BUCKINGHAM ROAD Headingley. Pair of semi-detached houses, now school, with terrace steps. Late C19, altered C20. For Mrs C and Mr J Kirk. Coursed squared rock-faced gritstone, ashlar details, blue slate gabled roof with fishscale slates to turrets. Gothic Revival style. A mirror pair, 2 storeys with basement and attics, 8 bays with entrances bays 2 and 7. The projecting entrance bays have half-glazed double doors with cusped traceried fanlight in a round arch with attached columns; these bays rise as square turrets with ornate terracotta plaques between the 1st-floor and attic windows with the letters 'CK' and 'JK'; brick corbel and eaves bands and pyramid roof surmounted by a wrought-iron finial. Plate-glass sashes, some altered to top-hinged casements; square bay windows with pierced quatrefoil balustrades to ground-floor bays 1, 4, 5 and 8, the central pair probably lacking the cusped heads which remain in ground and 1st-floor windows. Bays 1, 4, 5 and 8 have gabled attic windows and wrought-iron finials. Continuous moulded first-floor band. Tall corniced stacks forward of ridge, between bays 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. Left and right returns: elaborate 3-light stair windows with quatrefoil tracery and stained glass. INTERIOR: alterations to accommodate the school have included the removal of walls and the partitioning of larger rooms but the original plan of principal south-facing rooms separated from the rear service rooms by a long corridor can be traced. Also of note are: the elaborate wooden Gothic-style staircases with pierced balustrade and brass handrail; the tiled floor in the stair hall, blue brown and white, possibly Minton; doors with 4 chamfered panels; ceiling cornices in the principal rooms, ground and 1st floors, the entrance hall having a deeply-moulded bracketed cornice; several rooms have ceiling roses. To rear, centre, a projecting single-storey bay is a top-lit ?billiard room with elaborate timber roof. Terrace steps: the entrances are flanked by low stone walls with chamfered copings; the steps continue beyond the footpath and have elaborate balustrades with quatrefoil piercings and terminals with stepped pyramid capstones.

Built as Buckingham Villas, the 1886 Directory reveals that the occupants were Mrs C Kirk and Mr John Kirk, a stover and dyer. (Kelly's Directory of Leeds: 1886-).

Listing NGR: SE2846235637