Description

SK 22 SW
944/6/10011
05-FEB-01

BRANSTON ROAD
Branston
(North side)
Canteen at Branston Depot

GV
II

Canteen, surgery and social centre. 1918. Brick with gabled slate roofs. Planned as a double-gabled E-W range with a double-gabled block projecting from centre of front (S) elevation; surgery and service blocks frame 2 service yards to rear. One storey. All gable ends are stone-coped with horizontal mid band, all windows are metal multi-paned casements and all doors to front and flank elevations are panelled and half-glazed. S elevation faces onto former bowling green, and has projecting flat-roofed 6-bay loggias to each side: these have brick piers rising to dentilled course below parapet, fronting 2 doors and 3 windows to each side. Projecting central block has 3-bay S elevation with paired windows set in recessed bays articulated by pilasters and stepped eaves course. Each double-gabled side elevation has full-width recessed ground-floor bay with dentilled cornice over continuous lintel and central doors with overlight and flanking windows. Similar end gables to E and W gables of main range. Interior retains original joinery including panelled doors.
HISTORY: This building, prominently sited close to the Office Block (qv) of the former National Machine Gun Factory, was built as a canteen, surgery and social centre for male and female munitions workers. Facing onto a former bowling green, it relates to an important phase in the development of British factory architecture, when imported American ideas on sustaining the health and fitness of the workforce had their first impact on factory planning. 169,700 of the 305,900 employees on the 215 National Factory sites in November 1918 were women, a factor which influenced the layout (included segregated areas for men and women) of these new types of factory buildings. This building is externally unaltered, and stands in relationship to the most architecturally elaborate complex built under the National Factories scheme.

Listing NGR: SK2337621237

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26538652

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)