Details
BRISTOL
ST6072 SILVERTHORNE LANE, St Philip
901-1/43/1924 (South East side)
04/03/77 St Vincent's Works and attached
front area railings
(Formerly Listed as:
SILVERTHORNE LANE
Office block at St Vincent's Works
(Reemco))
GV II*
Offices. c1891. By TR Lysaght, possibly completed by RM Drake.
For John Lysaght. Limestone ashlar, Pennant rubble with
limestone dressings, rock-faced red sandstone, ashlar lateral
stacks, a slate hipped roof with lanterns, and copper-clad
turrets.
An oblique L-shaped site with the entrance in the splayed
corner, double-depth plan. Ruritanian castellated Gothic
Revival style. 2 storeys and attic; 12-window range.
Entrance set in a rectangular ground-floor panel between
turrets, with a battered sandstone plinth and banded
rustication below an impost band; semicircular-arched doorway
and narrow linked sidelights with incised voussoirs, has
3-panel 2-leaf doors and a wrought-iron foliate grille to a
plate-glass fanlight; machicolation across top of panel
beneath a bowed band with Moorish foliate carving, and 2
semicircular-arched first-floor windows with plate-glass
sashes.
Flanking octagonal turrets have broach bases, and narrow
leaded windows with rope-moulded hoods; becoming round above
the first floor with a moulding, and linked by a machicolated
attic storey with 4 arrow slits and a stepped crenellated
parapet; the tops of the turrets have corbel-tables and rope
mouldings, crenellated parapets and conical copper roofs.
Flanking 3-window wings, extended to 5 windows on the right,
have paired plate-glass sashes in narrow semicircular-arched
recesses with rope-moulded hoods, linked by first-floor sill
and impost bands, with a corbel-table above and a parapet with
cross arrow slits; ground-floor windows have a central
mullion, palmette capitals and rope-moulded lintels, and
similar semicircular-arched first-floor windows. To either end
is a buttress below a first-floor scrolled bracket against the
wall, and crenellated bartizans with fish-scale domed tops. To
the rear is the drawing office with 2 fully-glazed sides of
6/9-pane sashes.
INTERIOR: very good and complete Doulting tiled entrance
lobby, octagonal top-lit hall and open-well stair, with cream
and yellow moulded and patterned tiles, red and grey panels
and spandrels, and green tiles under the dado.
Small lobby has half-glazed doors with bevelled glass; a
semicircular-arched arcade around the hall and first-floor
stair well, with putti to lintels, stained-glass fanlights and
5-panelled doors with brass finger plates; moulded dados and
archivolts, mosaic floor, wrought-iron balustrade to
first-floor gallery, and stained-glass ceiling lights; slate
open-well stair with smooth soffit, wrought-iron balustrade
and rails with carved beasts at the ends.
Offices have walnut panelled walls and wainscots, pedimented
doorcases with fluted pilasters, and a panelled niche with a
statue of Eros. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: good wrought-iron area
railings on dwarf sandstone walls in front of the wings.
HISTORICAL NOTE: An outstanding example of late C19 factory
architecture. Lysaght took over Acraman and Company's works
and site, for iron galvanising. His brother, TR Lysaght, died
before the building was completed, and the drawings are signed
by Drake. The company subsequently played an important role in
the development of colonial vernacular architecture, as
manufacturers, at its Netham site, of corrugated-iron and
pre-fabricated buildings.
(The Lysaght Century (1857-1957): Bristol: 1957-: 22-23; Gomme
A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History:
Bristol: 1979-: 379; Lysaght T R: CEBG: Bristol: 1891-; Jones
E: Industrial Architecture in Britain: London: 1985-: 129).
Listing NGR: ST6027072536
