Details
SJ 48 SW
392/10/10025
SPEKE ROAD, Garston
The former Bryant and May Match Factory
II
Includes: The former Bryant and May Match Factory, BANKS ROAD
Factory, 1919-21, extended 1948, and with subsequent minor alterations. Designed by Mewes and Davis, architects, and Bylander, structural engineer, for Maguire, Paterson and Palmer Ltd. Main range of reinforced concrete flat slab construction, with brick wall panels incorporating multi-paned metal windows. Extension to service wing in unrendered brickwork.
PLAN: bold linear arrangement, with principal flat-roofed manufacturing range on an east-west alignment, and narrow, flat roofed service wing extending southwards at the west end.
NORTH ELEVATION: 2 storeys, 35 bays, the central entrance bay set within a later link with an adjacent building to the north, The bays are delineated by full-height painted concrete columns with plainly-moulded capitals bearing red rose symbols, below a plain eaves band which formerly supported a parapet. Recessed within the bays are multi-paned metal window frames with concrete cills, incorporating pivot lights, all set upon a plain brick plinth. Wide storey band incorporates decorative coloured tile panels within bays. Wide end bays incorporate double doors to stair lobbies, within chamfered concrete surrounds with integral drip moulds. Above the centre of the range is a circular concrete water tower.
WEST ELEVATION: 16-bay range, with the main manufacturing range of 3 bays width, extended by a further 13 bays to form a service range of single bay width, and incorporating a 3-bay opening at ground floor level (now partially infilled) supported by a deep concrete beam.
INTERIOR: the manufacturing floors incorporate 2 arcades of circular columns with mushroom-shaped heads, typical of flat slab construction, and integral square shaped bearing pads which support the shuttered concrete floor panels, The side and end wall columns and those at the comers have integral jowels to support bearing pads. The columns which support the water tower are of larger section, the centre and end staircases are of concrete. The majority of the rear wall brick panels were removed when extensions were added. These extensions, which have infilled the rear service yard created by the frontage range and the narrow service range are not of special interest.
HISTORY: The theory of flat slab development was first set out by H T Eddy in 1890, in a paper at the University of Michigan. Patents for the system were taken out in the United States by C A Turner, who subsequently built flat slab buildings in Chicago, where the first building regulations for such work, later known as 'Chicago rules' were developed. The first British applications of the technique were by the engineer Bylander, who had met Eddy, and who encountered difficulty with the London Building Regulations whilst attempting to use the technique in the capital. The Garston Factory is amongst the earliest British applications of a pioneer technique which contributed strongly to the development of reinforced concrete constructional systems throughout Europe and the United States.
Listing NGR: SJ4112284093
