Oldknows Factory

Oldknow's Factory is a lace factory complex on St Ann's Hill Road in Nottingham, comprising two linked factory ranges and a separate ancillary building. The buildings are currently in use as studios, offices, workshops and for textile manufacturing.

The Egerton Street range was built around 1850 for Frederick Lymbery, a lace manufacturer. It is an L-shaped range of four storeys plus basement, constructed in brick with brick and ashlar dressings and a low pitched slate roof behind a parapet. It features a bullnose brick eaves course. The fenestration is generally shallower than the adjacent St Ann's Hill Road range, with a mixture of slender timber and metal framed glazing bar casements with bullnose brick surrounds and stone sills. An 18-window range occupies the street front, interrupted at ground floor by a central cart entrance with a wooden surround extending to an arched head at first-floor level with glazing bar casement infill. A small pitched roof with circular clock frontispieces covers two centre bays. A lift addition is located to the front left. The rear has regular fenestration with a loft door at second-floor level to the left of a slightly projecting entrance block which has a clock on its return face. To the right of this is a pentagonal stair and chimney stack tower. The southern 5-window range has been raised, with four windows at ground and first-floor levels on the street facade. The interior has floors carried on timber beams supported by cast-iron columns, with cast-in mounts for line shafting visible on ground-floor columns.

The St Ann's Hill Road range was built around 1855 for Hartshorn & Oldknow, lace manufacturers. It is a single range with projecting blocks at each end, five storeys plus basement in the southern half and four storeys plus basement in the northern half. The building is constructed in brick with ashlar dressings and features a first-floor sill band and dentillated brick eaves course. Windows are mainly original metal glazing bar casements with wedge lintels. The St Ann's Hill Road frontage has regular fenestration of 29 windows arranged 1: 24: 4, with loft doors in the right bay. This frontage is embellished with a metal spearhead railing mounted on a stepped brick plinth with ashlar coping. The rear has regular fenestration with loft doors in the left bay. A central pentagonal stair tower with clock encloses a circular chimney stack. A warehouse addition at the south end has a first-floor sill band and regular fenestration over five storeys plus basement. The acute corner at the junction of St Ann's Hill Road and Alfred Street North is expressed in curved brickwork, with a window on each floor in a curved metal frame. A smaller addition to the north of the main range has mainly sash windows and a first-floor sill band, four storeys with 4 x 1 windows and a loft door on the second-floor. The interior engine room has ribbed cast-iron cross beams and brackets. Upper floors have wooden floors and cross beams with tie rods carried on cast-iron columns with lineshaft mountings; the top floor has thinner columns. The warehouse addition has similar columns without lineshaft mountings.

A separate warehouse to the east, built around 1880 and now used as workshops, is constructed in brick with an incomplete Bulwell stone plinth and ashlar and moulded brick dressings. It is three storeys with a triple gabled front to the street featuring a six-window range with a cart opening to the right with a wooden lintel. To the left of the cart opening are three windows and a door. Above are regular fenestration on two floors, all windows having wedge lintels. The left return has four windows. The right return, with the stone plinth, has a blind basement and above, two segment-arched windows on each floor, with three narrower windows on the second-floor to the right. Windows are mainly original cast-iron glazing bar casements.

Warehouse additions and the separate ancillary building date to the later 19th century.

History and Significance

The factory complex dates to the early 1850s. The Egerton Street factory appears to be the earlier building, with lesser floor-to-ceiling heights. It was built for lacemaker Frederick Lymbery and was later occupied by Clarke & Sons, lace dressers, bleachers and dyers. The last recorded lacemaker in this building was Henry & Joseph Turner in 1932.

The St Ann's Hill Road factory was first occupied by lace manufacturer Hartshorn & Oldknow. James Oldknow, the co-founder, patented the use of perforated steel patterning bars in 1849 and owned a factory with Maillot in Lille, France. In 1860, Oldknow was elected Alderman to the town council for St Ann's Ward, a reflection of his position as a successful businessman. He subsequently served as Lord Mayor three times: in 1869, 1878 and 1879. As chairman of the 'Castle Committee', he was largely responsible for the development of Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, England's first municipal art gallery, which opened in 1878. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in the same year. Oldknow lived in Villa Road, close to the factory, and died in 1888, being buried at Rock Cemetery, Mansfield Road. After 1905, the factory's only listed occupiers were yarn merchants. Today, it is largely occupied by recording and artists studios.

Oldknow's Factory is listed as a well-proportioned and imposing example of a largely unaltered mid-19th-century lace factory complex, retaining distinctive and unusual features typical of lace-making factories in the area. It is strongly associated with James Oldknow, a significant figure in both the lace-making business and in Nottingham itself.