Listed Building: Former Globe Leather Works 4-6 Dunster Street (1390678)

Former curriers and leather merchants works. Late 1880's. Red brick with stone dressing and parapeted slate roofs. C17 Low Countries style. 3 gables facing, the central more ornamental with canted pilasters and elaborately shaped gable, 3 storeys with basement and attic. 12-window range at first floor with further window on left over entrance door. Casements to left and centre, iron framed windows to right. Iron framed windows in second floor to whole façade and small windows in gable attics. Ground floor has casements to left and centre gables and 1/1 sashes to right with centre left doorway, all these last with stone moulded cornices, the doorway with stone moulded doorcase. Carriage entrance to far right. INTERIOR. Iron columns and joists support the various floors and thee is a queen post roof construction. Upper floor has evidence of slatted floor construction, probably associated with drying. The Globe Leather Works was most probably built for James Collier and Co., a firm of Northampton curriers and fancy-leather merchants established in 1878. The firm operated the factory until the 1950’s. It is a finely detailed building in the contemporary London ‘Pont Street Dutch’ style, with the allusions to wealthy C17 Dutch and Flemish merchants houses and warehouses being particularly appropriate to the boot and shoe industry’s rapid expansion. The Goad plans show that the west range was a warehouse and that the other 2 ranges constituted the factory with leather drying on the second and attic floors. The building forms part of the most significant group of buildings of the boot and shoe industry in Northampton.

Record last edited

Oct 30 2023 3:29PM