Description

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SE 1338 SE
8/145

SHIPLEY
Saltaire
VICTORIA ROAD (east side)
Victoria Hall including wall, gate-piers and sculpted lions to front area, and railings to rear

22/11/66

GV
II*
Saltaire Institute. 1867-71. By Lockwood and Mawson for Titus Salt. Ashlar, with rock-faced stone to basement. Welsh slate roof. T-plan. Two storeys and basement. Symmetrical, eleven bay Italianate facade. Vermiculated quoins to ground floor and portal. Pilaster-quoins to first floor. The central bay breaks forward and is surmounted by an elaborate square tower with pyramidal ashlar roof. Each side of the tower has a modillioned segmental pediment on an enriched entablature, supported by Corinthian columns which frame slender round-arched windows. Elaborate central portal with double, panelled doors, fanlight, and large open segmental pediment supported on large consoles, the tympanum with a cartouche bearing the Salt coat of arms, and flanked by the carved figures of Art and Science by Thomas Milnes. Square-headed basement windows. Round-arched archivolted ground and first-floor windows, the latter framed by fluted Corinthian colonnettes, and with carved head keystones and blind balustrade with turned balusters. Dentilled cornice between ground and first floors. Modillioned cornice forms base to deep, panelled parapet decorated with rosettes and pedimented piers with grotesque winged beasts supporting iron finials. Three-bay return elevations. The main hall projects at rear and is seven bays long by five bays wide with tall slender round-arched windows with glazing bars and circles in heads.

Interior: the entrance hall has a large, stone dog-leg staircase with large square piers and vertically symmetrical turned balusters. The main hall has an elaborately plastered, coffered roof. Pilasters mark the bay divisions and support a bracketed entablature. Raking gallery at rear on fluted cast-iron columns. Former side galleries removed. Later glass panelling at rear.

Dwarf wall (railings missing) to front area with two pairs of square ashlar piers to centre, two of which retain the decorative bases of cast-iron lamp standards. At the front corners, on large square bases, are two sculpted lions, by Thomas Milnes of London, representing
War and Peace. At the rear of the wall are round section cast-iron railings with spear-head finials on a dwarf wall.

The institute cost £25,000 to build and contained a main hall to seat 800, a lecture room, two art rooms, a laboratory, a gymnasium, a library of 8,500 volumes and a reading room. A quarterly fee was charged and ranged downwards from 2s. for adult males.

The institute is set back from the road and the front area, along with that of the school opposite (q.v.),forms a gardened square. Part of Saltaire model village.

Listing NGR: SE1397137883

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Victoria Hall at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q16911959

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

• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings