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Date: |
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Description: | 1865.
Red Hall, north front, Guildford Street. An 1865 photograph of the house built in 1628 for Thomas Metcalf, merchant and under-bailiff of Leeds, and alderman from 1630 to 1637. Reputedly the first brick-built house in Leeds, it was on the site of the Schofields Centre. King Charles I was imprisoned there in 1646/7; according to legend, the Leeds benefactor John Harrison presented him there with a tankard of ale which was actually filled with gold pieces. The 'King's Chamber', a large room on the first floor, was converted to Schofield's cafe in 1912. During the alterations a six-pound shot was found embedded in the south front, a relic of the 'Battle of Britain' in 1643, when Sir Thomas Fairfax took the town for the Parlimentary forces despite the entrenchments which stretched from St. John's Church past Red Hall to Boar Lane, Swinegate and the river. In the eighteenth century the house was occupied by Richard Thornton, the Recorder of Leeds who helped Ralph Thoresby with his history of Leeds, 'Ducatus Leodiensis' (1715), and later by Henry Ibbetson, made a baronet by George II for raising a body of men to help put down the 1745 rebellion. It was still used as a house in the nineteenth century; Sir Frederick Johnson was the last person to be born there, in 1890. However, many rooms were sublet as offices (this photograph shows a ground floor room in use as solicitors' offices) and it was bought by Snowden Schofield in 1912 for incorporation in his stores. The last remnants of the hall were demolished to make way for the Schofield's store opened in 1962. | License: | http://www.leodis.net/article.aspx?id=12 | Rights holder: | Leeds Central Library | Subjects: | Guildford Street Redhall | Source: | Leodis - A photographic archive of Leeds | Identifier: | http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?id=85... | Go to resource |
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