Gargoyles

One of the joys of living somewhere like Leeds is that a significant chunk of it was built at the height of the British Empire by bewhiskered Victorian aldermen who were having no truck with concepts like non-permanence or understated. Their buildings were stone-built, designed to last, and were usually done on a scale suitable for the State Capitols of a multinational superpower. And understated didn’t usually feature when t’committee considered the interior decor, either - most of the public space in Leeds is liberally plastered with gargoyles, terracotta mouldings and tiled walls that never fail to remind me of the toilets at my first secondary school.

There’s nowhere in Leeds where this is done to enthusiastic excess in quite the same way as the Central Lending Library. 120 years of council beauracracy has done its best to hide it by nailing the odd security system and fire exit sign to the walls, but in the main it’s the same Gothic madness as was dreamed up by the architect, who was quite clearly out of his mind on wool fumes when he sat down to decide what the walls were going to be covered with. It’s a combination of delicately-sculpted plasterwork tracing the outlines of doorways and roofribs, stained glass, moulded terracotta the colour of hobnob biscuits and ceramic floortiles that have withstood six generations of Leeds footfalls and would have done sterling service protecting the space shuttle, if only Nasa had known about them.

The inspired madness didn’t stop with the architect, however - two years ago in a glorious fit of artistic overindulgence, the City topped it all off by commissioning two stainless steel gargoyles - six feet tall apiece - that are chained to the railings of the first-floor landing balcony. And quite stunning they look, too.

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