Gotts Park Mansion, formerly known as Armley House, is a Grade II listed country house in Armley Park, 3 miles from

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

city centre. Formerly the home of industrialist

Benjamin Gott Benjamin Gott (24 June 1762 – 14 February 1840) was one of the leading figures in the industrial revolution, in the field of textiles. His factory at Armley Mills, Armley, Leeds, was once the largest factory in the world and is now home to the ...

, it is now the home of Gotts Park Golf Club. The mansion was built in 1781 for Leeds merchant, Thomas Woolrick. Gott, a wealthy mill-owner, first leased the mansion then bought it in 1812. Gott commissioned

Humphry Repton Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown; he also sowed the seeds of the more intricate and eclectic styles of ...

to improve the house and landscape. The mansion was then remodelled, partly to Repton's plan, by Robert Smirke, architect of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. Thus it became the first Greek Revival house built in West Yorkshire. Gott's descendants lived in the mansion until the 1900s when, after the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, it was used as a hospital. In 1928, the building and grounds were taken over by

Leeds City Council Leeds City Council is the local authority of the City of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. It is a metropolitan district council, one of five in West Yorkshire and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of England, and provides the majority of l ...

on a 999-year lease, on the condition that they be used as a leisure space for the people of Leeds. Gotts Park Golf Club opened to the public on 8 April 1933.

References

{{Reflist Armley Grade II listed buildings in Leeds