101, WATER LANE

101 Water Lane, Holbeck

Storerooms and house, formerly known as the Round Foundry, built around 1800 and substantially altered in the late 19th century. This is a brick building with a slate roof, featuring a short ridge stack positioned left of centre and between the 5th and 6th windows.

The building is two storeys tall with seven windows on the first floor. These are 4-pane sashes with flat or cambered arch heads, with margin lights at the far left. The ground floor has been altered in the 20th century. A notable architectural feature is the full-height straight joint between windows 5 and 6, with a header arch to the right that is underbuilt, and a slight change in building alignment to the right beyond this point.

The rear elevation, viewed from left to right, contains a 9-pane sash window in a flush frame with stone sill and cambered stretcher arch; a blocked loading door and altered 9-pane window above a blocked cart entrance which breaks forward slightly; and an added tall 2-storey range of 4 windows one room deep, with sashes featuring margin lights. The ground floor to the left is obscured by a lean-to addition and rendered; the centre and right portions are also rendered.

The interior was not inspected.

The building represents part of the engineering works first developed by Matthew Murray and David Wood between 1795 and 1802, with capital from James Fenton and William Lister. Although the firm of Fenton, Murray and Jackson closed in 1843, the straight joint and blocked cart entrance confirm this building's connection to the original works. The site was known as the Round Foundry after a major building of 1802 and was arranged around a courtyard fronting Water Lane, with further buildings parallel to it and west across Foundry Street. These were the remains of the world's first fully integrated engineering works, combining all processes previously undertaken by separate small master craftsmen.

The 2-storey range at the rear occupied the site of the brass foundry. Matthew Murray, initially working as an engineer for the textile trade including Marshall Mills, developed some of the first steam-powered machines and machine tools. He brought together specialised buildings including foundry, forge, finishing shop, erecting shop and drawing office. The works manufactured large complex items from textile machinery to steam engines, supplying orders worldwide to Sweden and Russia among other destinations.

In 1799 Murray showed a representative from Bolton and Watt's Soho engineering works around the foundry, initiating intense rivalry. Notable products included beam engines for water works in London and the Midlands (1807), a flax heckling machine (1809), and in 1811 one of the first steam packets, created by fitting a captured French privateer with engine, boiler and paddles which steamed from Yarmouth. In 1812 the works produced two 4-foot 1-inch gauge steam engines on an iron track to haul coal trucks for the Middleton Coal Company—the first railway for which an Act of Parliament was obtained, the first rack railway, and the first on which a steam locomotive achieved success. In September 1813 George Stephenson visited the Leeds railway and another by Murray on Tyneside; his engines are considered to have been copies of the Murray locomotives, with the Rocket developed 16 years later.

After Murray's death in 1826, his son-in-law took over and steam engines for railways were produced again. Between 1834, when the first passenger line to Leeds opened, and the closure in 1843, twenty broad gauge engines were built for the Great Western Railway, the most famous being Ixion. From that date railway engine production moved to the Railway Foundry in Pearson Street.

During the second half of the 19th century the buildings became the Victoria Foundry of Smith, Beacock and Tannett, machine tool manufacturers.