Description

LANCASTER

SD4862 CATON ROAD
1685-1/4/64 (West side)
Waggon Works (front range and
office)

II

Former waggon works, now office, warehouse, and part of
factory. 1863-5. By EG Paley. For the Lancaster Carriage and
Waggon Works Company. Roughly coursed rock-faced sandstone
with rock-faced and ashlar dressings. Slate roofs.
Caton Road front is a long range of single-storey workshops,
with fairly regular fenestration, on either side of an
entrance gateway which is marked by a tall clock tower and
leads to an irregularly-shaped yard. To the right and left of
the tower the walls are pierced by tallish windows, although
at the far left (in what may have been a boiler house since it
is marked by the brick base of a chimney) these windows are
separated at regular intervals by small square windows. To the
right of the tower and at the far left the roofs have
clerestorey ventilation. Old photographs show a row of brick
chimneys, now removed, rising from the front wall to the right
of the tower between each window, originally serving
blacksmiths' hearths.
The tower is of 3 stages, with quoins which in the top stages
form clasping pilasters. It has a high waggon entrance under a
rusticated segmental arch with 4 linked round-headed windows
of ashlar above, and a clock face on a slightly projecting
panel in the top stage. This motif is repeated on the side
elevations. The steep pyramidal roof is topped by a timber
bell-chamber with 2 pointed trefoiled openings on each face
and a pyramidal roof.
The office block, within the courtyard and facing south, is of
2 storeys with a wide central bay between 2 semi-octagonal
windows, all under a roof with bracketed eaves. The doorway
and ground-floor windows have segmental heads; on the first
floor the bay windows have straight heads and the paired
windows above the door have round heads.
INTERIOR: the office block contains a staircase with cast-iron
balustrade.
HISTORY: built alongside the Midland Railway Line, the works
were finally closed in 1908 and in 1914 were taken over for
use as an internment camp for enemy aliens. For a while the
officer in charge was Robert Graves, who describes the
experience in 'Goodbye to All That'.

Listing NGR: SD4840662941

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q6483127

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

• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)