Rose Court With Terrace Wall And Steps (Leeds High School For Girls)

Rose Court with Terrace Wall and Steps

A large house, now part of Leeds High School for Girls, built around 1842 and probably designed by John Clark, possibly for George Smith, a Leeds banker. The building is constructed in ashlar with a slate hipped roof and comprises two storeys plus basement and cellars.

The north front presents five bays with a central hipped bay that breaks forward, featuring a wide porte-cochere supported on four Tuscan columns that carry an entablature and shallow pediment. The main entrance is a wide six-panel door with overlight, the top four panels and overlight fitted with X-pattern glazing bars. The windows have narrow moulded architraves with aprons below the taller ground-floor windows, which are fitted with casements. The façade is detailed with a double string course, eaves band with brackets, and tall ashlar chimney stacks positioned to the left and right of the centre bay.

The south front takes advantage of the sloping site, with a high terrace featuring a retaining wall and steep flight of steps. The wall is faced in rock-faced ashlar (later additions include concrete buttresses and railings) and contains eight round-arched niches; the end bays break forward. The central steps are flanked by a rusticated ashlar balustrade. The central garden entrance is recessed behind two Tuscan columns in antis. The tall ground-floor windows here have a plain pulvinated frieze and cornice with architraves and string course matching the front elevation.

The left return features a music room window designed as a deep square bay with pilasters and deep blocking course. The right return originally contained service rooms (now demolished) and has a single-storey late twentieth-century addition.

The interior contains several notable features. The circular staircase hall has a fine mosaic floor with Greek motifs, a cantilevered staircase with scrolled cast-iron balusters and mahogany handrail, and a domed ceiling supported on detached composite columns. The south-facing rooms are linked by fine six-panel double doors in swagged architraves. The central room is octagonal, opening from the garden, with a vaulted ceiling and niches. The music room to the left displays fine plaster decoration including pilasters, a frieze of putti with lyres, and a coved and panelled ceiling; a surviving pair of Dresden china finger plates bearing the family crest remain on the door. The right room features a bucranium frieze, though fireplaces have been concealed or removed. To the right of the entrance hall stands a fine spiral service stair with turned balusters. On the first floor, the main stair rises to a balustraded landing with columns supporting a vaulted ceiling; the central rear dressing room is octagonal. Extensive vaulted cellars lie beneath the house.

The land upon which Rose Court was built formed part of the Fawcett Estate, which was sold in building plots between 1837 and 1842. George Smith was among the first Leeds bankers to move from the city centre to Headingley. By 1886 the occupier was Miss Caroline Lambert. The design of the stair hall and cast-iron balustrade are identical to those found in Woodhouse Hall on Hyde Terrace, also designed by Clark.

The house underwent twentieth-century alterations, including the demolition of right-return service rooms and the late twentieth-century single-storey addition.