Braime Pressings Limited

This pressed steel works was built in 1911-13 on the site of an earlier foundry, with later additions and alterations. The architect is unknown. The building comprises a red brick and terracotta frontage with office suite under slate roofs, and steel-framed workshops with glazed roofs.

Plan and Layout

The office suite stands towards the front, positioned off-centre, with brick-fronted works behind and to either side. The works consist of four adjacent rows of sheds running back from the frontage, open internally, each with a glazed pitched roof of varying width and length. Later sheds surround this core, and to the south, fragmentary remains of a 19th-century foundry (Brookfield Foundry) are incorporated into the works.

Exterior

The main entrance occupies the central block, which has three storeys and a clerestory, arranged in five bays. The central doorway has double panelled doors set in a round arch with flanking columns bearing raised floral motifs, supporting an open segmental pediment above a cartouche and cornucopias. Two round-arched windows with stone dressings stand to either side, with five similar windows above (without stone dressings), and four windows on the second floor with a central clock in a brick setting. 'AD 1913' appears in raised terracotta above the first-floor windows.

To the right of this block stands a two-storey canteen block with a hipped clerestory roof and ten windows along the front. It projects forward by four windows and an entrance from the central block. The front windows match the shape of those on the centre block, but are leaded with stained glass in the upper arched lights. On the return towards the centre, the first-floor windows match those on the front, while the ground-floor windows are not leaded but have stained glass and stone dressings. A round-arched vehicular entrance to the rear has stone dressings and two windows above, and an angled section to the centre block has a round-arched doorway and an engraved round window above, both with stone dressings. The first-floor window matches the others.

To the left of the centre block is a single-bay, two-storey block with a hipped roof and seven windows to the side matching those on the centre block. An attached single-storey block to the front is a 1995 rebuild of an earlier post office building bought by the company in 1931; this is not of special interest. Further brick-fronted ranges to each side are not of special interest, though those to the left of the core have some visual value in their front elevation.

The machine shop bay stands behind the main entrance and office block, with a narrower lower bay to the left. Two wider and higher bays lie to the right behind the two-storey canteen block, originally designed for a steel mill but never used as such. To the rear, the central bays have brick walls pierced by large multi-paned round-arched windows. A small two-storey brick block at the rear of the left-hand bay houses toilets and stores.

Interior

The ranges described above house an office suite and a canteen which back onto the working areas in the glazed steel-framed sheds behind. The original corridor has half-tiled walls and a terrazzo floor. Internal glass windows to the offices have leaded and stained glass in the upper sections with Art Nouveau-style floral motifs. The office facing onto the workshops has half-glazed walls in the same style, original double doors, a curved corner and a glass pyramidal roof. The first-floor office also overlooking the workshops has curved sides and leaded glass. Internal and external windows onto the workshops are in similar style, including a circular window above the first-floor office. The ground-floor reception room has mahogany screens installed in the 1930s with materials from a local bank. First-floor offices include a boardroom with panelling and later remodelling, and corridors with round-arched doorways. Other rooms were largely remodelled in the 1970s.

The workshops have steel frames and trusses supporting roofs originally of glass, now with a mixture of coverings, mostly replacements. They are largely open between sections, with some remnants of the original wall between the two left-hand bays of the four. The rear walls are brick with some round-arched windows. The outer ranges are mainly later and not of special interest, though they include, on the southern edge, heavily altered walls and the roof of a late 19th-century furnace already on the site when taken over by Braime.

History

The firm was founded by two brothers, T.F. and J.H. Braime, in 1888, initially to manufacture oil cans. They purchased the site from the Union Foundry Estate and took over some of the existing buildings while constructing the offices and initial machine shops that now form the core of the site. They joined with a group of Leeds manufacturers, including Joseph Kayes and Henry Berrys, who were working with or producing equipment for pressed metal products. Braime Pressings diversified into deep-drawn pressings, a specialised field, and still supplies a wide variety of industries with pressed steel components.

The first new buildings, consisting of the main façade, offices and the two bays immediately behind them, were constructed in 1911-14. The canteen building to the right was built in 1917 on land purchased in 1916, and the two tall bays behind were constructed at around the same time. Originally intended for rolling mills, these were instead used for more presswork, probably in response to the demand for munitions during the First World War. The company played an important role in armament provision at this time, and in 1914 Braimes was one of only two industrial plants in the city with a police guard.

It was the introduction of female staff to the factory that prompted the provision of a canteen, as it was considered necessary to provide female staff with hot meals during their shifts. The canteen facilities, originally with separate floors for men and women staff, represent a significant piece of social history, marking the changing employment patterns enforced by the War in the absence of men engaged in fighting. An advertisement of 1920 shows that the firm continued to produce a range of armament components after the War, as well as motor car parts, agricultural products and other pressed steel items.

A number of later extensions in both directions from the central core were made in the 1930s and later; these are not included in the designation. The former Brookfield Foundry buildings were also incorporated into the main factory.

The Leeds engineering industry had its roots in the provision of textile machinery, beginning in the 1790s. By the mid-19th century it was Leeds' second largest employer, specialising in heavy engineering, especially boilermaking for the locomotive industry. Pressed steel as a specialised part of the engineering industry began in the later 19th century, when Samson Fox at the Leeds Forge pioneered developments in pressed steel fabrications. Braime Pressings' development of oil cans took place at around the same time, and the firm subsequently developed its own specialism in deep-drawn work. The demand for munitions such as shells and mines during the First World War provided a major impetus to the technology, and it was during this period that Braime reached its peak as an employer. The Black Country had the main concentration of firms, but the large works at Kirkstall (now gone) was important, and Braime Pressings was and is nationally known in this specialised and important element of the engineering industry. Its isolation from the main centre of similar engineering works forced the firm to diversify, which has contributed to its survival.

Significance

The core of this well-preserved engineering works, designed for the production of pressed steel components, is of special interest as a nationally important component of a specialised industry type strongly associated with the Leeds area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The core elements of the site are fronted by an impressive and architecturally distinguished façade and office suite retaining many original features. This frontage is extremely rare in its quality and decorative detail, and is unparalleled in surviving engineering works of the period. The core of this large site, consisting of both offices and engineering sheds dating to between 1911 and 1917, is largely intact. The side sections are mainly later and are not regarded as of special interest. The significance of the site in a national context is confirmed by current research on engineering works being undertaken by English Heritage.