Description

LEEDS

SE2733 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, Armley
714-1/33/487 (West side)
05/08/76 Armley Prison: inner range

GV II*

Inner range to prison, containing offices, chapel, cells.
1847, altered C20. By William Belton Perkin and Elisha
Backhouse; S wing extended 1857. Ashlar, edge-tooled quoins,
brick internal skin with rubble infill, slate roofs. Castle
style. The complex contains former board rooms and offices,
chapel, cells in 4 radiating arms.
Opposite the entrance archway (qv) is the tall 2-stage block
with central corridor and former lodgings, Prison Board
meeting rooms: former round-arched entrance originally reached
by a flight of stone steps. These steps removed, entrance
archway reduced in height, decorative wrought-iron grille
inserted. Deeply-recessed round window in roll-moulding above,
flanking lancet windows, clock and 3 lancets above, stone
brackets and embattled parapets.
Behind this block a tall pitched-roof range with chapel on
upper floor: 6 bays, underceiled and re-ordered, 3 paired
windows each side, chamfered chancel arch, west gallery with
panelled benches.
To W again a taller semicircular tower with rectangular
turret, corbelled embattled parapet. Central well and 4
radiating wings of 4 storeys with small paired round-arched
windows, iron bars, embattled parapet on corbels and square
corner turrets with arrow-loops; in end wall a 3-storey canted
bay window lighting the galleries; over the centre of each
wing a large octagonal ventilation tower.
INTERIOR: central well has spiral staircases to galleries with
stone cantilevered landings, straight-flight stairs,
balustrades; the wings open to the vaulted roofs. Extensive
refurbishment in progress at time of survey, but some original
cells survive with studded metal-lined doors, recess in wall
alongside and wooden corner shelf suggesting a serving hatch.
HISTORICAL NOTE: by the early C19 the treatment of prisoners
was beginning to include an emphasis on correction as well as
punishment. The prison system generally adopted was that of
solitary confinement for most of the day, the prisoner
'thinking over' his problems. The panopticon system of the
late C18 was developed into the radial plan seen at Armley:
many individual cells in separate wings projecting from a
central core, each wing having a central top-lit corridor.
Armley closely follows the arrangement of Pentonville Prison,

London, by Joshua Jebb, 1840-42 and published in The Builder
in 1847, but here the monumental entrance block is not linked
to the inner complex. Rapkin's map of 1850 shows the original
plan of the 'New Borough Goal' and has a vignette depicting
the prison with driveway from Armley Road, then the Leeds and
Stanningley Road.
(Dixon, R & Muthesius, S: Victorian Architecture: London:
1978-: 114; Rapkin: Map of Leeds: 1850-).

Listing NGR: SE2795633352

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533672

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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