The Garden Gate Public House

THE GARDEN GATE PUBLIC HOUSE

Public house built in 1902–3, designed by W. Mason Coggill of Stourton. The building is constructed of brick and terracotta with glazed tiles to the frontage, and features a grey slate hipped roof with moulded eaves cornice, brick parapets to the left and right returns, and paired corniced side stacks with small dormer windows. The front parapet and cresting at the centre have been removed.

The exterior displays two storeys and an attic arranged in three bays in ornate Italianate style. The central entrance is marked by a 4-panel door with a semicircular overlight, flanked by elliptically-arched windows. All are highly decorated with moulded tiles forming recessed panels, fluted pilasters, and swags of fruit and flowers. The first floor carries a band with raised lettering reading 'GARDEN GATE'. A prominent oriel window to the centre of the first floor contains a curved tripartite round-headed window with flanking single lights and keyed architraves, with pilasters to the corners and a swag frieze below.

The left return presents a symmetrical five-window façade on a sloping site, with windows grouped in pairs and separated by slightly projecting chimney stacks ornamented at first-floor level. The right return features a central entrance with a moulded high Classical surround and segmental pediment broken by a round-arched staircase window.

The interior follows a central corridor plan with extravagant decorative treatment throughout. The threshold is of fossiliferous black marble, and the small lobby contains a mosaic floor bearing the public house name. The main front bar has walls lined with moulded tiles and a deep cornice of large tiles in Art Nouveau style, with a tiled fireplace featuring egg-and-dart moulding to the mirror. The bar front is curved with a cyma-moulded profile and tiled overall. A hatch serves the Smoke Room, which retains low screens, bench seats, panelled walls, and a glazed screen wall to the corridor with service bell buttons and small oval plaques bearing the maker's name: 'J.Claughton / Complete House furnisher / Hunslet, Leeds.' The Smoke Room fireplace features a cast-iron grate and carved wooden surround with mirrored overmantel.

The central corridor is tiled throughout and includes a round arch halfway along. Five doorways open from the right side of the corridor: one leads to the Tap Room (now a games room) with stone fire surrounds painted in imitation of marble, a moulded wooden frame to the mirror above, and moulded cornice; another opens onto the wooden dogleg staircase to the upper floors; a third provides access to the stone cellar stairs; a fourth, with glazed panels marked 'Ladies', originally served as the side entrance passage; and a fifth, marked 'BAR', opens into a room with a glazed screen, bench seats, and a cast-iron fireplace with carved wood mirror surround and ceiling cornice.

The first floor front room extends across the entire width of the building and retains original cornices and openings for two original fireplaces. Other rooms on the upper floors remain largely intact with original doors and cornices. The building combines the plan of a small late Victorian and Edwardian public house, with counter in the vault and hatchways serving the smoke room and corridor, with decorative treatment rivalling that of much larger city-centre gin palaces of the period. The tiles were probably manufactured by the Leeds Fireclay Company at Burmantofts, Leeds, towards the end of the period when tiled walls were generally popular.

A public house has occupied this site since the 1820s and was named the Garden Gate by 1849, likely in reference to local market gardens in the area. It was sold to Henry Ryder in 1874 for £2,560, and subsequently sold again in 1878 and 1881 to Edward Wilson, who acquired the public house together with the brew house, wash house, yard and appurtenances. Wilson commissioned the rebuilding of the pub in its present form by W. Mason Coggill. Following Edward's death, the building was leased to William Whitaker's brewery in 1911 and eventually, via Ind Coope, was sold to Tetley's in 1964. The area underwent redevelopment in the late 1960s, but local intervention secured the building's preservation, although it no longer stands on the main Leeds–Hunslett road, which has been blocked off and pedestrianised.