The Victoria Foundry Machine And Erecting Shops Now Rover Garage

The Victoria Foundry Machine and Erecting Shops, now Rover Garage

This foundry workshop complex, now used as a car repair premises, stands on the south side of Foundry Street in Holbeck, Leeds. It comprises three phases of construction between 1863 and 1882, with late 20th-century modifications.

The buildings were part of Smith, Beacock and Tannett's Victoria Foundry, which operated from the late 1840s until 1899, manufacturing machines and engines. From the late 1860s the firm specialised in overhead cranes and supplied items to the War Office, the Admiralty, and international markets. The earlier part of the building (around 1863) survived the fire that destroyed the circular assembly shop in 1875. The iron-framed structure built to replace that assembly shop also survives in part.

The structures use cast-iron, possibly steel frames with brick infill in 1:5 English bond. The 1882 range features vertical timber cladding. The roof is corrugated asbestos. The building forms a tall single storey with inserted flooring in places, arranged in 3 by 9 bays.

The main northeast-facing front has three gables with brick (1875–77) on the left and timber cladding (1882) on the right. Three, two, and two tall round-headed windows are arranged across the facade—the left three set in stretchers, those to centre and right in wood frames. The lower parts of each window are blocked or altered. Wide access doors have been inserted in the central bay.

The southeast facade returns along the building, showing two distinct phases. The left end (with four upper-level windows visible) dates from the early 1860s and features cylindrical columns with modern brick infill supporting a horizontal timber beam. Above this rises a wall of hand-pressed brick in 1:5 English bond with square segmental-headed windows in stretchers. A row of holes below sill level suggests the position of a former lean-to roof. The right section comprises five bays of the cast-iron framed erecting shop of 1875–77, which originally extended further south. This section has cylindrical full-height columns with cast-in brackets supporting ribbed beams at mid-point and eaves levels. Sockets at eaves level indicate where projecting horizontal beams from the demolished section were located. Brick infill in random bond (probably 1882) fills the framed walls.

The rear (southwest facade) facing Marshall Street shows a horizontal timber beam with joist holes incorporated into 20th-century brickwork.

The right return facing up Foundry Street has a cast-iron frame with a box girder at lintel level for the wagon entrance, with two square windows above.

Internally, the building has three parallel pitched roofs in a characteristic 'nave and aisles' arrangement with open-sided upper floors to left and right. Ten pierced cast-iron stanchions on the left support more slender stanchions (some pierced), all with cast-in brackets on the inner face. The right side has four similar stanchions carrying a riveted box girder, above which are eight pierced slender stanchions with brackets on inner faces.

The roof trusses reflect the building phases: queen posts to the west end (1860s), five thin-section cast-iron trusses on girders to the southeast (1875–77), and timber A-frames with iron tie rods and apex shoes to the centre and north aisle (1882).

This building represents an important phase in the development of the Round Foundry site and in the history of engineering. Matthew Murray pioneered the creation of an integrated engineering works on this site in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with his 'Rotundo' formerly standing in this area. The surviving building is typical of the later 19th-century assembly shop, built with evident awareness of earlier building styles—particularly the tall round-arched windows aligned to catch early morning light, similar to those of the dry sand foundry. It is likely the workshop described in 1888 as 'a fine new substantial building' in the Industries of Yorkshire (p.84), which notes it was 'several smaller workshops thrown into one...by taking down some of the old outer walls and putting iron pillars and girders in their place.'