Mount St Josephs College Of The Blessed Virgin

LEEDS

SE2835NW HEADINGLEY LANE, Headingley 714-1/64/787 (North East side) 05/08/76 Mount St Joseph's College of the Blessed Virgin

GV II

Wesleyan college, now Roman Catholic College and Leeds Diocesan RE centre. 1867-68 with later C19 extensions. By Wilson and Wilcox of Bath. Rock-faced coursed stone (Potternewton stone) with ashlar dressings from the Meanwood quarries; slate roofs. Large and low, 2 storeys, 7 bays, courtyard plan. Gothic Revival style. Recased stone steps to central gabled porch: double doors, plate tracery overlight, moulded Gothic arch; 3-stage clock tower above with 3-light traceried window, arcaded clock stage, conical stone dome on short columns, bud finial. 3-window flanking bays: 3-light traceried windows to ground floor, 1st-floor windows are gabled through eaves dormers with quatrefoil lights in the tympana, the central window surmounted by a double flue chimney; pierced parapets, end stacks. Outer projecting 3-window bays in similar style but with twin pyramid roofs with small gabled dormer windows and elaborate wrought-iron finials. Possibly later gabled bay far left with plain surrounds to windows; a 4-window single-storey bay far right with traceried 2-light windows, pilasters between. Rear: walling of coursed squared ashlar, large grey slates to roofs; central chapel with 3-light E window and 2-light cross windows to side walls, 2-storey ranges with shouldered arches to ground-floor windows. INTERIOR: not examined; plan as described in the 1872 Directory comprised: entrance hall under tower, library right, board room left, main corridor running along rear, 8 students' day-rooms off; left wing: 4 lecture rooms, one with an open timber roof and a chemistry laboratory with lecture room. Right wing: dining hall with open timbered roof, kitchen at right-angles, governor's and housekeeper's apartments. Sick and convalescent wards and students' rooms on 1st floor. Contractor Mr Whiteley of Leeds, Governor the Revd John Farrar. Built as a training college for the Wesleyan church, the 1889 OS map shows rear wings, the E wing L-shaped to form a small courtyard on the E side. The rear wings extended, chapel and flanking ranges built to form an enclosed rear courtyard late C19-early C20. In 1924-1930 it was leased by Leeds University as a hall of residence and renamed Devonshire

Hall, that name transferred to the existing hall of residence on Cumberland Road (qv). (Porter's Leeds Directory: 1872-: XVIII; Gosden, PHJH & Taylor, AJ: Studies in the History of a University: Leeds: 1974-: 59).

Listing NGR: SE2838935968