Building 19, former workshop at Elsecar Ironworks

Workshop, probably circa 1835, for Earl Fitzwilliam’s Elsecar Ironworks.

MATERIALS: well-dressed, coursed sandstone with deep horizontal tooling. The inner facing to the upper floor is brick. Blocking of earlier openings also generally in brick. Welsh slate roof.

PLAN: currently an undivided space accessed via large double doors inserted into the north-east gable. The building was originally open-fronted to the ground floor on the south-east side with a central, first-floor taking-in door above. A smaller pedestrian door to the south-west gable gave access to an internal staircase to the first-floor. All these openings were subsequently blocked.

EXTERIOR: two storeys and five bays with regularly spaced windows to the side walls with stone lintels and projecting sills, surviving window frames being cast iron divided into small panes. The first-floor taking-in doorway is quoined and is now partially obscured by a later building. The north-east gable appears to have been previously largely open to a lower, gabled building since removed, the opening being infilled with C20 brickwork into which large double doors have been inserted. The in-filling of the original open front on the south-east side is of earlier brickwork. Gables are raised and coped. There is no evidence of removed chimneys.

INTERIOR: the iron lintel and supporting cast iron columns of the original open-fronted ground floor are exposed internally. The columns appear to match those used for similar open-fronted buildings constructed for Earl Fitzwilliam’s Central Workshops in the 1850s. Scaring left by the removed stone staircase against the south-west gable and blocked sockets for substantial floor beams indicate the original presence of an upper floor. The roof structure is exposed with timber trusses, the rafters being underdrawn. There is an inserted steel joist, probably for a winch, set adjacent to the tie beam of one of the roof trusses.