Summary
A workshop for Elsecar Ironworks built before 1849, probably 1830s when under the direct management of the Fitzwillam estate. Used as a storage outbuilding in 2020.
Reasons for Designation
The former workshop at Elsecar Ironworks, pre-1849, Building 19 at Elsecar Heritage Centre, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* built before 1850, the only surviving ironworks building pre-dating William and George Dawes’s mid-Victorian modernisation, the building displays unusual architectural consideration for an industrial building with well-dressed stone used externally over a brick internal skin, prefiguring the approach taken with the Central Workshops.
Group value:
* with the other surviving roofed buildings and extensive archaeological remains of the scheduled Elsecar Ironworks, one of the best surviving C19 ironworks in England;
* as part of the complex of buildings which formed Elsecar Central Workshops, this remarkable survival of an early and influential centralised workshop facility which absorbed a number of ironworks buildings after the closure of the ironworks.
History
Building 19 was built in the first half of the C19 as part of Elsecar Ironworks which had been established by John Darwin & Co in 1795, but had been run by Earl Fitzwilliam’s Wentworth Woodhouse estate from 1828, mainly under the management of Henry Hartop. The building is not shown on a sketch plan of 1814, but was mapped by the Ordnance Survey in 1849 and is depicted on a detailed plan of the ironworks that was leased to William and George Dawes in 1849. Under the Dawes’ lease, the ironworks was modernised and its operations expanded until retirement and a lack of new tenants saw closure in 1885. Most of the structures at the ironworks were then demolished, with a few buildings, including Building 19, retained and absorbed into the Earl’s adjacent Central Workshop complex which had been developed in the 1850s to service the estate’s collieries, this subsequently passing to the National Coal Board with nationalisation in 1947.
Building 19 is thought to be the only surviving building from the ironworks that pre-dates Dawes’ lease. Features of its construction suggest that it was built during the period of the Earl’s management (1828-1849). The building is thought to have been a workshop of some form because of the large number of windows: the upper floor possibly used for pattern making for small and medium sized castings; the ground floor, originally being open-fronted on the southern side, perhaps used for larger items. Alternatively, the open-fronted ground floor may have been used for small scale casting into moulds or sand beds. Evidence for this may survive within the floor, which was concealed below a build-up of material at the time of the inspection. Ordnance Survey maps indicate that sometime between 1901 and 1929 a railway siding was laid to enter the northern gable of the building, this is thought to have then been used as a plating shop until 1950.
Ironworks, alongside collieries, were key drivers of Britain’s industrial development in the C19. Elsecar Ironworks, which is also designated as a Scheduled Monument, is one of the best surviving C19 ironworks nationally because a number of its buildings were absorbed into the Central Workshops complex and have thus survived. Most C19 ironworks in England have been either completely cleared or redeveloped. Elsecar Central Workshops was an early and pioneering industrial complex, prefiguring similar complexes built as the coal mining and other industries became more highly capitalised towards the end of the C19 and into the C20. Henry Hartop (1785-1865), the ironmaster who was employed by the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam, effectively adapted the concept of the model farm to service the industrial needs of the estate. Successive Earl Fitzwilliams, who were influential members within the first rank of society and the British Establishment, took pride in showing off their industrial concerns to visitors. Elsecar is thus thought to have been nationally, perhaps even internationally, influential.
Details
Workshop, probably circa 1835, for Earl Fitzwilliam’s Elsecar Ironworks.
MATERIALS: well-dressed, coursed sandstone with deep horizontal tooling. The inner facing to the upper floor is brick. Blocking of earlier openings also generally in brick. Welsh slate roof.
PLAN: currently an undivided space accessed via large double doors inserted into the north-east gable. The building was originally open-fronted to the ground floor on the south-east side with a central, first-floor taking-in door above. A smaller pedestrian door to the south-west gable gave access to an internal staircase to the first-floor. All these openings were subsequently blocked.
EXTERIOR: two storeys and five bays with regularly spaced windows to the side walls with stone lintels and projecting sills, surviving window frames being cast iron divided into small panes. The first-floor taking-in doorway is quoined and is now partially obscured by a later building. The north-east gable appears to have been previously largely open to a lower, gabled building since removed, the opening being infilled with C20 brickwork into which large double doors have been inserted. The in-filling of the original open front on the south-east side is of earlier brickwork. Gables are raised and coped. There is no evidence of removed chimneys.
INTERIOR: the iron lintel and supporting cast iron columns of the original open-fronted ground floor are exposed internally. The columns appear to match those used for similar open-fronted buildings constructed for Earl Fitzwilliam’s Central Workshops in the 1850s. Scaring left by the removed stone staircase against the south-west gable and blocked sockets for substantial floor beams indicate the original presence of an upper floor. The roof structure is exposed with timber trusses, the rafters being underdrawn. There is an inserted steel joist, probably for a winch, set adjacent to the tie beam of one of the roof trusses.
