designed by James Neill (1875) and an orchestra stand by Charles Fowler (1879). By this time, a stone boundary wall, with entrance gates and an entrance lodge in Hyde Park Road surrounded the 10 acres of horticultural gardens. In October 1884, the directors of the company put the gardens up for sale by auction. The plans detailing the sale showed an extensive and varied range of attractions: a ballroom, concert hall, refreshment rooms, brewery, vinery, conservatory, lawn, cricket ground, gymnasium, bowling green and skating rink, as well as the main entrance including the manager's house and boardroom. By late 1885, like Clapham before it, the Horticultural Gardens Company was finding it could not meet the debts associated with running and owning the park, and Ford, the financier, agreed to purchase the land and the fixtures, among which were 28 statues and busts. The land was purchased by extinguishment of the mortgage. Ford followed Hattersley in drawing up plans for terraced houses, following a similar pattern to the lower 10 acres already being developed. In 1886, a new wall breaking the gardens into two halves was erected, signalling their end. From then, as plans were approved, plots were rapidly sold and the plants of the gardens soon uprooted to be replaced by bricks and mortar, unlike the section developed by Hattersley, which had prolonged building times. Ford himself never acted as a housing developer, simply using his position to help potential purchasers, through his business contacts, to get mortgages and meet prospective investors. He also loaned to builders and speculative developers. Only a conversion of the old entrance lodge into two houses and a restaurant was done in his own name; this was done in 1888 by the architect Thomas Winn, involving the filling-in of the central archway, which contained turnstiles and pay boxes, and converting the first-floor ballroom into the restaurant. In a similar way to the Zoological Gardens, the existence of the Leeds Royal Park created an obstacle to building development in the sense that building took place around it and later it formed a specific estate in its own right. By the time it was finally sold for building purposes it was surrounded on three sides by newly built terraced houses. The only surviving building connected with either the Royal Park or the Horticultural Gardens is the old entrance lodge, now converted again into a group of houses