Building record 7203/55/1 - Main Factory Building

{1} The Whipple Engineering Co Ltd General Engineers, Sartoris Street. Factory of three storeys and four and a half bays on Sartoris Street. Now in use by 'Elite Specialists in printed and embroidered leisure wear' Film 14, photo 10.

{2} The former Windmill Works is a particularly late example of a three-storey shoe factory, built within the period 1899-1906. It consists of a nine-bay front range, fronting Sartoris Road to the north, and a short, slightly lower rear range of four very narrow pier-and-panel bays. The building has been re-roofed with concrete tiles. Other buildings are shown in a rear yard on the 1923 05 map, but were not seen.
The front range is in a more evenly graded orange brick than elsewhere, with pitched blue brick sills, buff brick segmental window arches, moulded brick hoods to the two semicircular-arched entrances and a moulded brick eaves. There is a large yard entrance with a timber lintel at the east end and the main works entrance adjoins this. The identical entrance in the westernmost bay is associated with two first-floor office windows that are sashed, in contrast to the others, which have iron frames with a central opening section. The original fenestration is complete, or nearly so. There is no loading doorway on the front elevation; instead this was accomplished via a doorway or doorways over the rear of the yard entrance, where an iron crane remains in situ on the second floor.
The short rear range has one window per floor in the south gable, of the same size as in the north front. The windows in the east elevation are small and associated with soil pipes, indicating toilets, though the width of the range, and the size of the gable windows, suggest that this was not its sole purpose.

<1> Ballinger J., 1999, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Industrial Period, (unchecked) (Digital archive). SNN4.

<2> ENGLISH HERITAGE, 2000, Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Survey, Site 7 (checked) (Catalogue). SNN105075.

Record last edited

Feb 25 2014 10:40AM