Description

SUNDERLAND

NZ3857 ROPERY ROAD
920-1/10/183 (North side (off))
10/11/78 Websters' Ropery

GV II

Ropery building, now offices. c1793. For Messrs. Webster and
Grimshaw; restored 1985-7 by Sunderland Borough Council.
Coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings; rubble returns
and rear; Welsh slate roof with ashlar copings. 4 storeys, 11
windows. 5 central bays project slightly; keyed round arches
with plain stone heads on impost blocks in bays 4 and 8 have
recessed renewed doors. Painted metal windows, those on ground
floor longer and on top floor shorter than the intermediate
windows, were originally iron, and have glazing bars and
pivoted central sections. Roof on paired plain brackets has
end gable copings on plain kneelers. Gabled rear wing has
wedge stone lintels to windows.
This was built for the manufacture of ropes using the first
machine rope-making process in the world, patented in 1793 by
Richard Fothergill; in 1795 it received the first steam engine
to be installed in a ropeworks.
(Milburn GE and Miller ST: Sunderland River, Town and People:
Sunderland: 1988-: 29; In Trust: 2 June 1976: Newcastle upon
Tyne).

Listing NGR: NZ3849457848

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26502289

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  Old House Care and Repair