Remains Of North West Range Of White Cloth Hall Including Entrance

LEEDS

SE3033SW CROWN STREET 714-1/78/145 (East side) 19/10/51 No.27 Remains of north-west range of White Cloth Hall, including entrance (Formerly Listed as: CROWN STREET White Cloth Hall)

GV II*

Entrance to cloth hall, now shops. Opened 1776, cupola from Second Cloth Hall of 1756, altered 1865 and C20. Red brick, part rendered and lined in imitation of ashlar, stone dressings, stone cupola, slate roof. 10 arches of a blind arcade remain from the much longer west range of the hall which took the form of 4 wings ranged around a rectangular courtyard, the northern range including the upper Assembly Rooms (qv). Facade: 3-arched entrance bay breaks forward with mouldings and key-blocks to arches on imposts above rusticated pilasters; central wide carriage entrance, glazed door in architrave to left; pediment above frames remains of shouldered architrave to circular window (blocked). Flanking blind arcade (4 to left, 3 to right) has plain impost blocks and probably inserted openings. Rear: walling to right of entrance bay intact: 4 round-arched recesses, 2 retaining original small-pane windows; stone sills and impost blocks; brick dentilled eaves. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORICAL NOTE: the Leeds cloth market was held in Briggate until the First Cloth Hall for undyed (white) cloth was opened in Kirkgate (qv) in 1711. Weavers bought from the merchants of the city who would then finish, dye and resell. In 1756 the expansion in the trade resulted in the construction of the Second Cloth Hall in Meadow Lane, by which time 4,000-5,000 clothiers attended the Leeds cloth halls each week. The merchants financed this, the third Cloth Hall in the 1770s, a period when three-quarters of the cloth passing through Leeds was exported, one of the country's major exports. The development of factory processing of cloth through all its stages in the early C19 caused the decline in the use of the Cloth Hall and when the viaduct carrying the new railway line was built in 1865 a large part of the building was demolished. No.25 White Cloth Hall (part) and the Industrial premises to rear of Third White Cloth Hall entrance range are not included

as part of this listing (Burt, S & Grady, K: The Merchants' Golden Age: Leeds 1700-1790: 1987-: 11; ).

Listing NGR: SE3041733348