Crown Point Printing Works - Leeds, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 47.345 W 001° 32.155
30U E 596451 N 5961049
This blue plaque has information about a building that was originally built as a print works and now forms part of Leeds College.
Waymark Code: WM19VYT
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/21/2024
Views: 0
LEEDS CIVIC TRUST
CROWN POINT
PRINTING WORKS
Alf Cooke (1842-1902) began printing in 1886.
He developed great skills in colour lithography
producing art reproductions and portraits of the
famous. In 1885 he was awarded a Royal
Warrant. Following a fire, these works were
entirely rebuilt in 1895 as "the largest,
healthiest printing works
in the world."
Architect: Thomas Ambler.
Lithography is a method of printing whereby an image is first created on a flat stone and the image fixed by a chemical process. The stone can then be used repeatedly to print the same image a large number of times.
At the time that Alf Cooke began printing the use of using colour in lithography was a relatively new technique.
Colour lithography requires a separate stone being created for each colour to be printed. The same piece of paper is then printed a number of times, once for each different colour using the appropriate stone plate.
Great care has to be taken to carefully align the paper each time a new colour is added.
Although Alf Cooke did not invent the process he was very succesful at finding new uses for the technique and his business was extremely succesful.
The fire in his premises that necessitated the erection of this building was actually the second one that had destroyed his business and could have bankrupted him.
That is why he commissioned the distinguished architect Thomas Ambler to design this fine new building – galleried, with a glass roof, lit by electricity, ‘the largest, cleanest, healthiest printing works in the world’. It has a clock tower designed to look like the tower on Leeds Town Hall. Learning from his two previous disasters, there was a fire engine inside the building ready to save the building if another fire broke out.
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After the printworks closed in 2006 the building was unused until Leeds College took it over and renovated it. Amongst other types of courses the 'Printworks Campus' specialises in modern digital technology printing courses.
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