Description

LANCASTER

SD4862 CATON ROAD 1685-1/4/64 (West side) Waggon Works (front range and office)

II

Former waggon works, now office, warehouse, and part of factory. 1863-5. By EG Paley. For the Lancaster Carriage and Waggon Works Company. Roughly coursed rock-faced sandstone with rock-faced and ashlar dressings. Slate roofs. Caton Road front is a long range of single-storey workshops, with fairly regular fenestration, on either side of an entrance gateway which is marked by a tall clock tower and leads to an irregularly-shaped yard. To the right and left of the tower the walls are pierced by tallish windows, although at the far left (in what may have been a boiler house since it is marked by the brick base of a chimney) these windows are separated at regular intervals by small square windows. To the right of the tower and at the far left the roofs have clerestorey ventilation. Old photographs show a row of brick chimneys, now removed, rising from the front wall to the right of the tower between each window, originally serving blacksmiths' hearths. The tower is of 3 stages, with quoins which in the top stages form clasping pilasters. It has a high waggon entrance under a rusticated segmental arch with 4 linked round-headed windows of ashlar above, and a clock face on a slightly projecting panel in the top stage. This motif is repeated on the side elevations. The steep pyramidal roof is topped by a timber bell-chamber with 2 pointed trefoiled openings on each face and a pyramidal roof. The office block, within the courtyard and facing south, is of 2 storeys with a wide central bay between 2 semi-octagonal windows, all under a roof with bracketed eaves. The doorway and ground-floor windows have segmental heads; on the first floor the bay windows have straight heads and the paired windows above the door have round heads. INTERIOR: the office block contains a staircase with cast-iron balustrade. HISTORY: built alongside the Midland Railway Line, the works were finally closed in 1908 and in 1914 were taken over for use as an internment camp for enemy aliens. For a while the officer in charge was Robert Graves, who describes the experience in 'Goodbye to All That'.

Listing NGR: SD4840662941

External Links

• Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q6483127

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

• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair by Hunt. Roger ( 2008 ) Hardcover
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)