Description

LEEDS

SE2932NE FOUNDRY STREET, Holbeck
714-1/80/836 (East side)
25/08/87 Former foundry building for Fenton,
Murray and Wood, engineers
(Formerly Listed as:
FOUNDRY STREET, Holbeck
(East side)
Former foundry and attached
workshops)

GV II*

Includes: No.103 WATER LANE Holbeck.
Foundry, now motor radiator repair workshop. c1795 with mid
C19 modifications. For Matthew Murray's Foundry Street works.
Brown brick, irregular 1:5 English bond, hipped corrugated
asbestos roof with tall 2-flue stack to rear of ridge, right
gable end. A tall single storey building of 5 bays, with a
lower lean-to addition at north end.
Facade to Foundry Street: tall, segmental, brick,
header-arched, multipane windows flanking central full-height,
round, header and stretcher-arched entrance, now with glazing
and garage doors. 3 tiers of round tie-bar plates.
Rear facade, to yard: 3 windows as Foundry Street, that to
right obscured by lean-to; central round-arched entrance
flanked by slightly lower blocked archways, the central arch
supported by stone Tuscan columns with imposts. Left return,
to Water Street: tall window as Foundry Street, added lean-to
extension.
INTERIOR: 5 brick buttresses against long walls have cast-iron
shoes, probably for an early travelling crane. This
modification of the 1840s is a very early example. Roof
replaced.
Probably Murray's first building on this site, and part of the
world's first integrated engineering works. The building
housed the dry sand foundry described in some detail by James
Watt junior in a letter of 15 June 1802. The firm of Boulton
and Watt was interested in the skills being developed by the
Murray workmen and one Halligan, who had previously worked at
the Soho Foundry in Birmingham, was persuaded to spy for them.
The building was described as 20 yards long and 12 yards wide,
containing 2 air furnaces and 3 stoves, one 20 x 13 feet for
loam, one 17 x 13 feet for boxes and one 17 x 9 feet for
cores. In 1816 a steam engine and boiler outside the south end
of the building was in use for blowing the furnaces in this
foundry.
This foundry building is a rare survival of an early
purpose-built workshop, providing good ventilation and weather
protection while apparently of some importance as an
architectural feature of the works, the stone columns in the
triple-arched entrance were intended to be seen from the Water
Lane frontage (now blocked), and reflects the use of brick and
stone in the White Cloth Hall, Crown Street (qv), of 1775.
(Redman, RN: The Railway Foundry, Leeds, 1839-1969: Norwich:
1972-; Netlam and Frances Giles: Plan of the Town of Leeds and
its Environs: 1815-; West Yorkshire Archaeology Service:
August 1995: Gomersall H: The Round Foundry, Water Lane,
Leeds: Building Notes & Comments; Fitzgerald R: pers.comm.).

Listing NGR: SE2960732900

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533950

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

• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)