City of Leeds Training College

The City of Leeds Training College, and after its merger with the Carnegie College of Physical Education, the City of Leeds and Carnegie College was a teacher training college established in 1907 in Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England.

The City of Leeds Training College grew out of the Leeds Pupil Teacher College founded in 1901 to train teachers centrally in the city rather than in individual schools. The college in the city centre was founded in 1907 and moved to Beckett Park in 1912. The site selected was the 35 acre site of Kirkstall Grange. The mansion house was already rented by Leeds Council to house teacher training students. After some opposition the property was bought for £48,000 from Lord Grimthorpe. A competition for Leeds architects to design a main building and seven halls of residence or hostels, two for men and five for women, resulted in 27 submissions. Building started in 1911 and the college was ready for occupation by September 1912. The mansion was used as a men's hostel named Grange. The other hostels were named after prominent Yorkshire people, Cavendish, Fairfax, Brontë, Caedmon, Macaulay Leighton and Priestley. The college had accommodation for 300 women students and 180 men in eight hostels each housing 60 students. By September 1913 the college was filled to capacity with students from all over England.

At the outbreak of World War I the college was about to admit 421 students when the War Office requisitioned the main building and three hostels for use as a military hospital, the 2nd Northern General Hospital. Local schools were used for teaching and several large houses in Headingley were used to house students. In 1916 the War Office took over the whole college for the hospital which remained until 1924. The college trained men and women but was not co-educational as men and women were taught separately. Out of 170 teacher training colleges it was one of only five that was mixed.

From 1918 to 1933, the principal of the college was the mathematician John Robinson Airey.

The Carnegie College of Physical Education was formed as the result of an initiative between the government and the Carnegie Trust to provide training for male physical education teachers. The Director of Education for Leeds, James Graham was instrumental in attracting the college to Leeds and building its premises on the Beckett Park campus in 1933. The Carnegie Trust provided £30,000 to provide a gymnasium and a hostel for 60 male students.

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