Sharp's Card Factory

The Sharp's Card Factory, also known as Sharp's Card Factory on Thorn Lane, is a printing works and offices built in 1936. Designed by Benjamin Chippindale and Richard J Edmondson of Bradford, it is a steel-framed building faced with coursed local sandstone, concrete, and cast iron, with art stone columns, and covered by a felted flat roof. The steel window frames have been replaced with aluminium at the rear. The design is in a classical style.

The building is four storeys high, with a basement containing a boiler house at the north end. It has eleven windows in each of the end bays and nine in the central section, with these bays projecting forward, supported by fluted Ionic columns on a stepped plinth that rise through three storeys to support the entablature and top floor. The central entrance features four-leaf oak doors carved with linen-fold mouldings, set within a surround with a flat lintel carved with recessed panels and a date plaque reading “1937”. A cast iron grille sits above the doors, and the rectangular architrave has classical bead and reel mouldings. The square windows have steel frames with margin lights and a central opening light, separated horizontally by cast iron panels with roundels and herringbone patterns in relief. These windows are divided vertically by local sandstone pilasters. The top storey is set back slightly, above an ashlar band with roundels, and the windows are smaller and paired in the outer bays. A deep fluted moulding forms a parapet around the top of the building.

At the rear (west), paired wide loading doors are found to the left and right, one retaining its original door and overlight. The fenestration mirrors the front, with sandstone pilasters, but with drain pipes running from the flat roof, and window frames replaced around 1992. Projecting toilet and staircase bays feature small windows and continuous glazed panels that light the stairwells.

The left return (south) has three bays of 1, 5, and 1 windows, with three shallow steps leading to a wide central entrance, now a window. Narrowed bays flank the entrance, and a second four-leaf door – in a similar style to the front entrance with a glazed overlight – is located far left of the central bay.

The right return (north) is symmetrical, with an entrance door positioned as the main front, far right of the central bay, and boiler house vents below the ground floor windows.