Waggon Works (Front Range And Office)

The building comprises former waggon works, now serving as an office, warehouse, and part of a factory complex. Constructed between 1863 and 1865 by EG Paley for the Lancaster Carriage and Waggon Works Company, it is primarily built of roughly coursed rock-faced sandstone with rock-faced and ashlar dressings, and has slate roofs.

The Caton Road front consists of a long, single-storey workshop range with regular fenestration, flanking an entrance gateway marked by a prominent clock tower. Significant windows punctuate the walls, and to the far left, likely a former boiler house, windows are interspersed with smaller square windows. Clerestory ventilation is present in the roof areas to the right of the tower and on the far left. Historic photographs reveal a row of brick chimneys, now removed, originally between each window to the right of the tower, serving blacksmiths’ hearths. The clock tower is three-stage, featuring quoins that form clasping pilasters on the upper stages. A waggon entrance is framed by a rusticated segmental arch, topped with four linked round-headed ashlar windows, with a clock face on a slightly projecting panel in the top stage. This design detail is repeated on the side elevations. The steep pyramidal roof culminates in a timber bell-chamber with two pointed trefoiled openings on each face, and a smaller pyramidal roof.

Within the courtyard, the two-storey office block faces south and features a wide central bay flanked by two semi-octagonal windows, all under a roof with bracketed eaves. The ground-floor doorway and windows have segmental heads; the first-floor bay windows have straight heads, and paired windows above the door have round heads.

The office block interior contains a staircase with a cast-iron balustrade.

The works were built alongside the Midland Railway Line and closed in 1908. Subsequently, they were used as an internment camp for enemy aliens from 1914. Notable among the staff was Robert Graves, who documented his experiences in his memoir, 'Goodbye to All That.'