Plans for internal and external alterations to Grade II Listed 18th century house in Bramley have been submitted to Leeds City Council planners for approval.
Whitecote House, off Whitecote Lane, was built in 1744 and is the large building in the middle, the other two buildings at either side of it were built much later.
Internal proposals by CRL Architects include a staircase from ground floor to cellar, the partitioning of the rear cellar to create a private bar and separate store area, and the partitioning of the front and rear cellars.
The external changes proposed will help access into the front store by excavating for a staircase at the front of the house and the alteration of a window into an external door. Yorkshire Stone flooring will also be reintroduced.
A design statement submitted with the application said the proposals will bring areas of the house which currently have poor access, which will help with the preservation of the historic property. It concludes:
“With the proposals we seek to provide the client with contemporary convenience within an historic listed building. Our interventions will be mostly limited to the interior and not detract from the view of the house for those travelling along the canal or towpath. The new entrance to the front cellar will bring a neglected part of the house back into functional use with a minimum of visible impact.”
The report adds the interior of the house was damaged in a fire around 1990. It has been renovated since and still retains some original features such as the splayed timber panelling of the sash windows, some cornicing and ceiling roses. Much of the detailing is, however, modern restoration and in many places is not in keeping with the age of the house.
The plans can be viewed in full here.
As previously reported by WLD‘s Mark Stevenson, Kirkstall Abbey was a powerful landowner in Bramley and the surrounding area until the Dissolution in the mid-16th century. One of its locally-held tenements was ‘Whitecote’, it is thought to have been a medieval grange or farmstead. This would have been worked by local people, but the profits would have gone to the monks at the Abbey.
A Whitecote House is marked on the 1847 Ordnance Survey Map of the area. By the 1880’s the Whitecote House that is there today is named on the maps, with no clue as to the fate of the previous one.