Reflections In Concrete

Royal Park Primary school opened its doors as Queens Road School on 28th September 1892. The building had been described as a “strong Victorian building, built to last”.

During the 1990’s the area of Hyde Park saw a large increase in students and a decrease in working families and, therefore, Primary School children. After surviving a bid for closure in 1997 the school still remained under-subscribed and by 2004 it was closed down but the local Council had promised that the building would be preserved for community use.

There is currently a fundraising scheme taking place in order to redevelop the building into a Community Hub but according to Civic Leeds “there is still a long way to go in meeting the £3million target required to fund the project”.

The Hunslet Mills were built by one William Fairbairn in 1838 as flax (textiles) Mills and are grade II listed buildings.

The R.H. Bruce building was built in the 1860’s as Victoria Flax Mill on the junction of Goodman Street and Atkinson Street. The building behind this, alongside the river Aire, was a blanket weavers called Dodgeson and Hargreaves.

The main building of the Mills is 7 storeys high and once housed over 1500 flax spinners.

Also, the entire complex was built with cast-iron columns supporting inverted T-section beams in order to resist fire.

The Mills have had several owners over the years but have remained empty ever since their closure in 1966. In the 1980’s the owners of the Mills claimed that the buildings were dangerous and needed to be demolished but after proper inspection the buildings were said to be salvageable and suggestions were made to turn the site into offices or homes.

By 2001 permission was given to turn the site into approximately 700 flats but to this day in 2012 work has not yet started and rumours have it that the plans have fallen through.

South Point House was previously the headquarters of Leeds City Council’s Environmental Health Service. The building was once also occupied by the local Leeds government.

Ever since the building’s closure in May 2008 the building has been gradually stripped down leaving only its bare shell that we can see today.

The block stands seven storeys tall and is situated at the junction of South Accommodation Road and Atkinson Street in the Hunslet area of Leeds.

The Crown Hotel in Hunslet, an ever changing area of Leeds, is one of the longest, if not the longest closed pubs in the city. The public house has been closed for over seven years, since 2005.

The Crown Hotel is situated opposite the now closed Tetley’s brewery on Crown Point Road.

An attractive feature of The Crown Hotel is its curved frontage and design. Also, the building hosts two decorative figure heads above each entrance door. These two figure heads go by the names of “Lord Snooty” and “Lady Muck” although no one seems to be too sure as to why.

The old First Bus Depot on Kirkstall Road was originally called LCT (Leeds City Transport) Trams.

The depot was a fairly modern operating depot that came during the mid 1990s due to the closure of the Headingley depot, for development purposes. Before that the Kirkstall Road depot had only been used as the central maintenance works.

The Kirkstall Road depot has been closed since May 2008 and operations have now been moved to a new site at the other side of the city, in Hunslet, next to the old South Point Offices.

The Queen Hotel was built in the mid-1800s under the reign of Queen Victoria and is another contribution to the number of closed public houses in Leeds.

The Queen Hotel is situated on Burley Road opposite the Yorkshire Television Studios and closed around June 2011.

The building has previously been described as a “Victorian gem� and hosts some very attractive stonework above the doorways.

The Queen was a Tetley house until the empires of breweries like Tetley were legislated out of continuation.

There are plans for the closed pub to be turned into a Tesco Express supermarket in the near future, which locals think would be a great shame.

On April 20th 2011 the roof of a closed LS6 Fisheries, on Burley Lodge Road, collapsed, crushing a parked car.

Luckily at the time there was no one inside either the car or the building.

Workers had been working in the building not long before the accident, getting it ready for demolition but luckily none of them were present at the time of the accident.

The area outside the old chip shop is a space where local children liked to play football up against the wall and locals say it was lucky that no one was hurt.

Richmond Court is a collection of 20 houses that acted as an emergency accommodation service for families that were facing homelessness. The buildings are owned by Leeds City Council but the service was provided by a company called CarrGomm. Carr-Gomm offer support to families and individuals in order for them to lead a more stable lifestyle.

The site was closed down when the contract expired in August 2011 because it was no longer seen as the most effective way to help suffering families. Receivers of the service also expressed a preference for dispersed self-contained accommodation rather than shared hostel conditions.

On top of this the level of families in temporary accommodation has decreased massively over the years, with a decrease from 351 in 2006 to just 28 in 2010.

Mount St. Mary’s Church

Mount St. Mary’s Church is situated in an area of Leeds that is commonly known as “The Bank”. From the mid 1800’s The Bank was home to a large community of Irish Catholics due to the demand for work during the industrial revolution building canals and railways. The church opened in 1857 and was funded completely by the Irish community at the time. Due to a lack of funds the church was not completely finished until 1865 when the chancel (alter) and north and south transepts (parts of the building in line with the arms of the cross) were added.

The Church is a grade II listed building and has always been a very powerful landmark in the area.

The main part of the building was designed

by Joseph Hansom and William Wardell and the transepts and chancel were designed by an Edward Welbi Pugin who was a famous architect of Catholic churches at the time, having designed over 100 churches and cathedrals by the time of his death.

Currently the church of Mount St. Mary’s is owned by a development company called Rushbond. There is plans to demolish the majority of the site in order for it to be developed into affordable housing. The remainder of the church building will be kept and will act as an entrance reception that opens up into a courtyard surrounded by the future houses.

Ben Richards 2012