Leeds Club Premises And Basement Railings

The Leeds Club premises and attached basement railings date from 1863 and are built in an Italianate style. The building is constructed of ashlar and has cast-iron basement railings. It is three storeys high with a basement, and has seven windows on the first floor. A heavy modillion cornice and balustered parapet top the building. The ground floor features moulded, round-arched windows with keyblocks. An entablature sits at impost level, supported by pilasters. A doorway on the left has paired Ionic columns supporting a heavy entablature, with the cornice extending across the ground floor. Above the ground floor are tall windows set in moulded architraves with cornice hoods on console brackets. Smaller, round-arched windows are found on the second floor, also within moulded architraves with keyblocks, and feature a string at both keyblock and sill levels.

The interior retains very fine and complete 19th-century decoration. The entrance hall includes an internal glazed porch with decorated pilasters, panelled walls, a dentilated cornice, shutters, marble fireplaces, and a screen of fluted composite columns leading to the staircase. The staircase has plaster panel walls and a dentilated cornice below a coved rectangular rooflight, with ornate cast-iron balusters, square newels topped with ball finials, and a moulded wooden handrail. The dining room has a dado, plaster wall panels, a dentilated cornice with a decorative frieze, and a black marble fireplace. Another screen of fluted composite columns leads to the reception and bar, which features an ornate wooden bar, a marble fireplace, and Ionic columns supporting a dentilated cornice. The main reception room on the upper floor has a coved ceiling with an elaborate central ceiling rose, walls decorated with composite pilasters supporting an ornate frieze and a dentilated cornice. The basement contains a very fine gentleman's toilet and cloakroom with mahogany doors featuring oval bevelled glass, tiled walls, coloured marble sinks with original fittings, a copper hood above the fireplace, urinals with coloured marble stall dividers, polished wooden doors to cubicles with wooden seats. The basement railings feature spearhead finials.