* Click here to sign up to free news and sport email alerts from Headingley Today.

The building is little known, and, truth to tell, so is the poet but a once-grand home on Headingley Lane, has nevertheless a strange and intriguing history.

Ashwood House is now divided into flats – but it was once the much loved childhood home of Alfred Austin, a Poet Laureate who appears to have been sadly unloved, at least in terms of artistic merit.
But that is not the house's only claim to fame – it is also believed to have been designed by a famous Leeds architect.

And although Alfred Austin is now famous, perhaps, for being among the least distinguished of Poet Laureates, he remembered Ashwood as a magical place of his childhood, later writing about how he would often watch the cavalry practising on the distant fields of Woodhouse Moor.
Austin was born in the house in 1835 and lived there until the age of 20, attending the local school as a child.

He then had a varied career: he was an eminent political journalist, called to the Bar, and twice stood – unsuccessfully – for Parliament.
In 1896, he become the official poet to Queen Victoria, following the death of Lord Alfred Tennyson.

It was a post he held for 17 years – but was an unusual choice. He took the position after his contemporary, William Morris, declined and may perhaps have been offered the job to block popular female poets taking the post.

Some of his most lacklustre lines, written about a royal illness read: "Across the wires the electric message came: he is no better, he is much the same".

However, Francis O'Gorman, professor of Victorian literature at the University of Leeds, says there is "no hard evidence to back up the gender issue theory". He proposes instead that Austin was probably selected due to his Conservative political views and close connections to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.

"Austin's Tory politics suited Lord Salisbury. He may have thought it would be useful to have a Tory ally in that kind of PR role," says O'Gorman.

But whatever his lack of artistic merit, Austin certainly loved Ashwood.
At the time he lived there it was the only substantial property standing between Hyde Park Corner and Headingley village.

Alfred's father, Leeds wool stapler Joseph Austin, built the family home around 1836. He deliberately chose an acre on the secluded, lofty plot of land known as Headingley Hill. Living above the industrialising hub of the city meant the Austin family could enjoy clear views and fresh air.

Today, the Grade II listed property of thick grey stone and high-arched glass windows is surrounded by several other houses and faces a busy main road choked with cars running between Leeds city centre and Headingley.

Yet despite the traffic and development, Ashwood continues to feel as if it belongs to another time.

Tall, thick-trunked trees – planted over a hundred and fifty years ago – frame Ashwood and help maintain the serenity originally intended by Joseph Austin in the 1830s. Its tall chimneys – are visible jutting above the treetops.

A three-tiered garden, leading from the lower woodland area up to the bay windows of the house, was once, by all accounts, manicured and landscaped to perfection.

Alfred Austin would later recall how he would explore those woods and play in the gardens, getting lost in the magic of his childhood home.
And a second intriguing aspect to Ashwood's history has also been
recently revealed.

Christopher Webster, an architectural historian, arrived at Ashwood whilst researching his latest book on the distinguished 19th century architect, Robert Dennis Chantrell.

Chantrell trained in London but came to Leeds in 1819 as a young man and spent his life in the city. He had a great influence on Leeds architecture and designed Leeds Parish Church, a building of great national importance.

Webster believes Joseph Austin commissioned RD Chantrell to design Ashwood.

The entrance to Ashwood uses a range of motifs found in Chantrell's designs from the early 1840s. "Significantly, all share similar doorways and pairs of octagonal towers at either side of a projecting central section, which forms part of a symmetrical composition," he said.

"Chantrell definitely designed a house in Headingley Lane. But we don't know which. There are no records. When a church or library was built, it was reported in the local newspapers and records survive. But, with houses, the recollections go as people pass away."

After World War II, the landlord divided the large house into four separate flats.

Leeds born Len Bower, now 88, lived in Flat 3 for seven years with his wife and daughter in the 1950s. "I was very happy there; I have lots of fond memories of the house and garden," he says.

Mr Bower says the house was a perfect place for his young daughter to explore. "The wild woodland at the end was magical for a child."

His daughter, Jane Bower, agrees: "Ashwood still features in my dreams nearly fifty years after I left."

Ashwood's garden is now less grand than in its magnificent heyday, vegetable patches and a chicken run now feature in its once palatial garden.

The current owner, Ian Whittikar, bought one flat in Ashwood in 1984, and managed to acquire the entire property in 2000.
He recalls: "When I bought Ashwood it was in a very bad state. It is an English Heritage property – but breezeblock walls were dividing the rooms, the ceilings had been lowered there was even florescent lighting.

"It was in a state of becoming derelict."
Mr Whittikar carried out a lot of work on the building, unearthing original features and modernising the property to suit its history. He rents the four flats and is keen the occupants know the history of this special house.

In an alcove in the grand mosaic-tiled entrance hallway hangs a framed yellowing newspaper-cutting saying: "Home of Yorkshire Laureate Alfred Austin."