You know how it is. You have an hour to kill between Nottingham and Derby so you start wandering aimlessly about hoping that something will grab your attention. That's what happened to me this morning and I found this, first as an enormous silhouette against the sun across the fields, and then on arriving in Derby Road Draycott I discovered this deeply impressive frontage to Jardine's Victoria Mill. Built between 1888 and 1907 it was started by E. Terah Hooley, a wealthy local industrialist, but finished by Ernest Jardine who stuck his name up below the clock face. It's all here- cream coloured rock-faced stone at the base and then red brick, blue brick, stone dressings and then that fishscale roof topping it out. And the clock still works and does Westminster chimes. They reckon this was the largest lace factory in the world and I'm not surprised, it appears to endlessly march down Elvaston Street at the side. I must come back when the sun lights the western elevation where there are four huge bow-fronted staircase turrets. What do you think? I ran about snapping away like a madman.
Halifax, West Yorkshire
3 days ago
9 comments:
What a beautiful building, the phrase "they don't build them like that anymore" immediately springs to mind. Those green fish scales on the clock tower really caught my eye. What's the building used for now, Mr. A?
It looks wonderful - and like The Vintage Knitter, I'd love to know what it's used for now.
Hi there, very cool Blog. Keep following you!
Terrific building. I really like the curved corners too.
I rarely like red-brick, late Victorian industrial architecture. But it seems to have worked well. So now I wonder what the conditions were like inside, as far as the workers were concerned - dark and Dickensian, or spacious, light and airy?
By the way, I know EXACTLY what you mean by "you have an hour to kill between Nottingham and Derby so you start wandering aimlessly about hoping that something will grab your attention" :) Blogging has so changed my life that I don't go ANYWHERE without a notepad and pen, just in case the kernel of a post-idea pops up into my mind.
It's probably just the angle at which you took the photograph,but I was instantly reminded of the Flatiron building in Manhattan.(Without the clocktower,obviously,which is a thing of beauty).
I am actually quite fond of Victorian Industrial Architecture, usually because they lavish the same love and detail on factories as they did streelamps and fences... you could have rounded your empty hour off with some investigation into the lace collection up there, believed to be one of the world's finest!
The bus shelter and waste bin so sympathetically incorperated into the scene set it off a treat.
Yes Diplo, but just look how I disguised that telegraph pole.
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