Leeds : Pevsner City Guide

Leeds has a rich commercial tradition and fine buildings to match. This absorbing book provides the first authoritative and detailed guide to that architecture. The city’s prosperity, founded on the wool trade, is reflected in the magnificent Jacobean church of St. John and elegant Georgian parades and squares with homes for wealthy merchants. Alongside them today stand proud warehouses and offices of the railway age in styles ranging from elegant neo-Grecian to Gothic and Moorish.

The civic pride of Victorian Leeds has as its crowning glory the grand Town Hall, testament to the talent of Cuthbert Brodrick, and along the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are important industrial survivals including the Egyptian-style Temple Mills. Recent revivals include the city’s public spaces and famously ornate and opulent Edwardian shopping arcades. Beyond the city center lie the romantic ruins of Kirkstall Abbey and the mighty seventeenth-century mansion at Temple Newsam.

Susan Wrathmell is an independent architectural historian based in West Yorkshire.