Monument record 953/15/1 - South Place Factory, Station Road

A single storey boot and shoe factory that was built by the London firm of Fredrick Cook in 1903. This large building was the first single storey shoe factory in Long Buckby. The factory had an unusually elaborate basemented front in the Edwardian baroqye style, executed in a warm orange brick and linestone ashlar. The main element of the front consisted of nine pier and panel bays, including a three bay centrepiece of considerable architectural elaboration. The factory was demolished in 2000.

{1} Erected in 1903 the factory was owned by the London firm of Fredrick Cook Ltd. The building had an elaborate Palladian style frontage. The building is still upstanding, but is now being utilised by 'Regent Belt Company Ltd'.

{2} The South Front comprised of a two storey façade with cellars below the eastern section. The front was sub divided into several offices by glass and pine wood panelling. Only in the entrance lobby did the original skirting survive.The principle entrance to the building was a central arcade leading to a small lobby. The most significant addition to the raised area seems to have been glass and wood screen and a walkway overlooking the factory area. The factory floor was lit by a north light roof supported on 64 columns, providing space for machines which were arranged in banks from east to west. By the late 1970's the rear of the factory space had been greatly altered with the addition of two large sgeds and an electricity substation.

{3} The factory was constructed in 1903 of brick with decorative stonework in the picturesque ‘Bourneville’ style. It comprised a factory building, 20 workers cottages and a factory managers house to the west. The factory structure was composed of three elements. The south front, the factory shed and ancillary buildings. The south front facing Station Road was an arcaded façade of nine bays with a central ornamented pediment over the main entrance. This was the office accommodation. The façade was flanked by ‘pavilions’, the latter recently used for storage (west) and lavatory facilities (east). Behind the façade was the factory space, which comprised a single storey shed, with a timber built, north-light roof, supported on cast iron columns. The factory cost £6000, it had electric light and its own gas plant. [More…]

{4} Built by the London firm of Frederick Cook in 1903-4, this large building was the first singlestoreyed shoe factory in Long Buckby. A manager’s house, No. 82, was built at the same time, together with twenty workers’ houses in South Place. Cook’s previous factory, in Connaught Street, Northampton, survives.

The factory has an unusually elaborate basemented front in the Edwardian Baroque style, executed in a warm orange brick and limestone ashlar. Behind the main nine-bay frontage were nine north-lit ranges. The main element of the east front consists of nine pier-and-panel bays, including a three-bay centrepiece, and is unified by the repetition of giant semicircular arches with elongated keystones intersecting with the moulding at the base of the parapet or frieze. In addition there are lower single bays of differing width at each end. The centrepiece, containing the principal entrance and offices, is faced in limestone ashlar on a brick plinth. The ashlar has banded rustication up to the level of the lunettes occupying the tympana of the outer arches, and on the piers as high as the base of the frieze. The central entrance is recessed between quadrants incorporating side-lights; the door has been renewed but the sunk-panelled fanlight is original. The entrance is flanked by paired columns with block capitals, the lower part of the columns block-rusticated in continuation of the banding elsewhere. A triangular pediment shows some signs of alteration, perhaps associated with the clock in the tympanum. The flanking bays each have a lunette divided by a column mullion. The western arch has a large loading door separated from the lunette by several courses of rustication, but the lintel is of concrete suggesting a later alteration. The eastern arch has a pair of ground-floor office windows separated from the lunette by just a lintel, and below these low basement windows. The view of the works published in 1929 suggests that the arches always differed, but that the loading door replaces two smaller doorways, divided like the office windows by a rusticated pier.

The bays flanking the centrepiece are of brick except for stone details — keystones and moulded window sills. Fenestration was originally confined to the lunettes and the basement windows, except that the bay immediately north of the centrepiece has an intermediate window and doorway, both original. South of the centrepiece basement-level windows do not appear, and a series of ground-floor openings have been inserted.

At the south end of the main block a single lower bay incorporates a large semicircular yard entrance, now reduced to a smaller doorway. At the north end there is a flat-roofed boiler-house with a slightly wider frontage. An original semicircular ground-floor entrance is flanked by basement-level windows. All three openings have bull-nosed blue brick quoins, and are now blocked; two ground-floor windows have been inserted. On the six-bay north return the brickwork steps down to a plainer quality, and the windows have semi-elliptical arches and cast- iron frames. An entrance towards the west end has been replaced by a large modern opening.

Attached to the factory at its south end is a contemporary house (No. 82) of two storeys and attics, which projects forward of the yard entrance at this end. It has no stylistic affinities with the factory frontage, but the principal elevations are executed in the same facing brick. The entrance front is on the south. The narrow east frontage has an original flat-roofed semicircular bay window on the ground floor, and a pair of narrow first-floor windows. A small window (now blocked) in the north return overlooked the factory front. The hipped plain-tiled roof has oversailing rafters and sprocketed eaves.

<1> BALLINGER J., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Long Buckby (Industrial), (part checked) (Digital archive). SNN100506.

<2> Foard G.; Ballinger J., 2000, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Long Buckby, (unchecked) (Report). SNN101574.

<3> Dawson M., 2000, Buildings Survey Of The Former Regent Belt Works, Long Buckby Northamptonshire, (checked) (Report). SNN100603.

<4> ENGLISH HERITAGE, 2000, Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Survey, Long Buckby site 6 (checked) (Catalogue). SNN105075.

<5> Historic England, Undated, South Place Factory, 72-82 Station Road, Long Buckby, BF103868 (Archive). SNN116182.

<6> ENGLISH HERITAGE, 2000, Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Survey, EHC01/044 (Archive). SNN113193.

Record last edited

Mar 5 2024 3:40PM