HM Prison Leeds
prison in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
HM Prison Leeds is a Category B men's prison, located at Gloucester Terrace in the Armley area of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, which opened in 1847. Leeds Prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is still known locally as Armley Gaol, the historical name of the prison.
History
Construction of Leeds Prison (originally named Leeds Borough Gaol) was completed in 1847. Built from locally quarried stone, the prison originally had four wings radiating from a central point in a Victorian architectural style (known as 'radial') typical both of the time, and in the latest UK prisons. Each of these four wings had three landings of cells. Eventually Armley Gaol was renamed along with other prisons to make their locations more obvious to people unfamiliar with these areas.
The prison was a site of execution (by hanging) from 1847 until 1961. The final execution was that of Zsiga Pankotai (31) on 29 June 1961, for the murder of 50-year-old Eli "Jack" Myers in a house burglary in the city's Roundhay district. The final execution in A block was that of 19-year-old Walter Sharpe in 1950.
The 'castle style' entrance range of the building and the 200 metres of perimeter wall received a Grade II* heritage listing in 1976.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “HM Prison Leeds” as prison in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5635217. Authority coordinates are 53.796, -1.576. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1847, 1961, 1950 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “HM Prison Leeds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.