Keighley Drill Hall

Keighley Drill Hall

This Drill Hall was opened in 1867 and designed by Messers John Judson and More of Keighley for the 35th West Yorkshire Volunteer Corps. It was extended in 1876 and again in 1897. The building is constructed of squared, coursed limestone with yellow sandstone dressing and has a Welsh slate roof with red ridge tiles. Cast iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout.

The building comprises an administration block fronting onto Drill Street with the main drill hall extending to the rear at right angles. The 1897 extension is attached to the eastern elevation of the hall, facing onto Lawkholme Road. Beneath the drill hall, the basement houses an indoor firing range.

The administration block is two storeys high with five bays to its southern elevation onto Drill Road. A plain ashlar band marks the 1876 addition of the upper floor. Windows have plain ashlar surrounds with segmental heads and retain 2-over-2 sash windows. Ground floor windows are short with high cills; one has been blocked and one converted into a doorway with an overlight. The first floor has three more normally proportioned windows plus a small inserted window with plain jambs. Guttering is supported on plain corbels. The roof features stone-built ridge stacks at either end and one centrally on the rear roof slope; the eastern stack has been lowered but provided with a chimney pot. The western gable is abutted by later terraced housing. The eastern gable is crow-stepped and blind but embellished with a key-stoned oculus framing a shield.

The main drill hall has blind sides with gutters supported on a projecting eaves band with paired moulded corbels. Raised and coped gables are abutted by other buildings. The roof has been recovered with cement tiles and includes continuous strip glazing about halfway up each roof slope.

The 1897 extension includes a gymnasium which abuts and runs parallel with the drill hall. It has a crow-stepped southern gable with a central segmentally arched vehicle entrance with plain ashlar surround and a later roller shutter door. Its roof treatment matches that of the drill hall. Adjoining the gymnasium to the east is a two-storey, three-bay range with end stacks and a mono-pitched Welsh-slated roof fronting onto Lawkholme Road. This range includes a large number of small ventilation grills. Ground floor windows are similar to those of the first floor of the administration block but have plate glass sash windows; the northern window has been converted into a door. Upper windows have 2-over-2 sashes with horizontal heads. This range continues southward at ground floor level for two bays with a window then doorway, the latter topped by a flat roof with a low semi-battlemented parapet. A small flat roof extension has been added above at the northern end, attached to the first floor of the three-bay section.

The interior of the drill hall is of nine bays and rectangular in plan, measuring 27 by 18 metres. It has a clasped purlin roof supported by cast-iron principal rafters braced by radial struts and braces tensioned by tie-bars. The hall is open to the roof structure and the floor is sprung timber. The northern end displays a semi-circular ventilation panel close to the ridge, with a Royal Crest flanked by rolls of honour recording men of D, E and F Companies who served in the Boer War. The western side-wall is blind and has a late 20th century Portacabin office built against it. The eastern side-wall is blind with two doorways having moulded architraves leading into the 1897 extension and a further 20th century inserted office. The southern end has a semi-circular ventilation panel close to the ridge, two staircases with decorative cast-iron balustrades and timber porches that rise from the hall floor to a pair of cantilevered galleries. These galleries flank a recessed round-arched panel decorated with the crest of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, The Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment. The galleries provide access through open round-arched doorways to the first-floor office rooms of the administration block. Doors in the base wall give access to the soldiers' mess, the armoury, the Army cadet's office and the entrance passageway. Two parallel, rectangular-plan former basement store rooms accessed by a winder stair run beneath the length of the hall; the western room forms an indoor miniature firing range and has an emergency hatch at its southern end.

The administration block rooms have plain plastered walls and secondary suspended ceilings with replacement plain plywood doors. Chimney breasts remain, although fireplaces have been lost.

The gymnasium within the 1897 extension is of five bays and rectangular in plan, measuring 15 by 11 metres, with a clasped purlin roof supported by timber principal rafters braced by radial struts and braces tensioned by tie-bars, carried on internal wall piers. The floor is concrete. The northern end is blind; the northern bay is occupied by a single-storey concrete blockwork office and store. Each panel in the eastern wall has a wire mesh ventilation panel and there are three doorways leading into the side range, the ground-floor room being the former billiards room and the first floor office formerly the band room.

The angle between the principal buildings and the road junction forms a yard partially enclosed by a wall. The eastern section retains a gatepost topped by spiked iron railings. This yard includes a small coal house with a catslide roof adjacent to the administration block and two extensions to the south of the gymnasium, one with a gabled roof and a smaller one with a flat roof.

Pursuant to section 1(5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, it is declared that the flat roofed extension built against the southern wall of the gymnasium, the Portacabin classroom within the drill hall, the blockwork office within the gymnasium, the central heating boiler and the central heating oil tank enclosure built against the eastern wall of the drill hall are not of special architectural or historic interest.