Description

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SILVER STREET (South side)
Lamb building (building 70), Kingston Mills

(Formerly listed as: SILVER STREET, LAMB FACTORY BUILDING AT KINGSTON MILLS)

23-AUG-74

II
Part of a former rubber manufacturing factory, formerly for manufacture of rubber flooring and hose pipes. Built c.1916 and designed in part by architect E.J.C Manico.

Two storeys, reinforced concrete frame with brick panels to north and east, Bath stone facades to principal elevations (west and south) and flat-roofed. Trapezoidal in plan.

Front elevation (west), onto Silver Street, has four bays with paired windows in each; all have segmental heads, projecting sills and keystones. Metal glazing bars divide each window into 16 panes.

Riverside elevation (south) is divided vertically into five bays by plain, shallow pilasters. Each bay has a single segmental headed metal window. String courses, one dividing the storeys and another above the first floor, are present plus a shallow parapet and a large chamfered plinth at roof level.

North elevation has brick panels separated by pilasters. It is also of five bays, four with rectangular metal windows and loading bays to left end. The lower right hand window openings are blocked.

East elevation of four bays. Two external concrete frame staircases in north and south bays provide access into building and connect to roof level. First floor window openings are blocked, except southern bay which has flat-headed metal window. Ground floor is connected to the west end of a former tyre casting workshop, c.1911 in date, which is not considered of special interest.

The internal space is similar at ground and first floor: large areas with no internal divisions and the square chamfered columns of the concrete frame evenly spaced throughout.

HISTORY: In the mid C19 Stephen Moulton, an associate of the American Charles Goodyear established a rubber manufacturing factory on part of the vacant Kingston Mill complex, a former cloth manufacturing site. In 1891 the company went into partnership with a London rubber manufacturing firm and became known as Spencer, Moulton and Co and began to expand. The company was bought by the Avon Rubber Company in 1956 who continued to manufacture rubber at Kingston Mills until its closure in 1992. It is likely that the constraints of siting the building on made-up ground alongside the river determined the type of materials used; a concrete frame construction provided an ideal solution in such conditions. The Lamb building employs the Kahn system of construction in which the longitudinal bars in the concrete are connected to wings or branches which rise to an angle of 45 degrees. The concrete frame was manufactured by the Trussed Concrete Steel Company Ltd in London, who directed its assembly on site. The advantage of a building with a concrete frame construction is that it is cheap and quick to construct as well as being fire resistant, durable and able to withstand vibration. Despite such advantages reinforced concrete construction spread slowly in Britain; partly due to the rigidity of local authority building regulations. However, following the establishment of the Concrete Institute in 1908, the method was more frequently adopted. However, whole concrete frame buildings which survive from before the inter-war period are relatively rare, particularly examples of individual systems such as Kahn's.

ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE: the special interest of the Lamb building resides in its use of a reinforced concrete frame, demonstrating early C20 advances in civil engineering. The Lamb building is also significant for its historical association with rubber production at Bradford-on-Avon and the contribution it makes to the townscape.

SOURCE: `Kingston Mills, Bradford-on-Avon' (1999) George & Toni Demidowicz.

Listing NGR: ST8264760930

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26287740

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.

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