Office Block At Branston Depot

Office Block at Branston Depot

Offices, built in 1918 by Thomas Lowe and Sons. The building is constructed in brick with stone and artificial stone dressings, has a slate roof and brick stacks. It follows a rectangular plan with an axial corridor serving the offices and is designed in the Edwardian Baroque style.

The building stands 3 storeys tall. The whole structure is characterized by a dentilled Tuscan entablature supported at the corners by clasped and recessed Tuscan pilasters, with a second attic storey above featuring a moulded cornice and string course to the parapet. All windows are horned 6/6-pane sashes set under flat brick arches. At ground floor level they are keyed, with recessed aprons to the first floor.

The south elevation is the most elaborate, featuring projecting 3-window end blocks flanking a central 15-window block arranged in 7:1:7 fenestration. The centrepiece is an open-pedimented entrance bay with panelled double doors set in a bolection-moulded architrave with a broken pediment positioned below a window in an eared architrave. The doors are flanked by paired Tuscan pilasters with scrolled brackets flanking an arched second-floor window in a similar architrave, the key of which extends to the pediment above. The side and rear elevations receive similar treatment, each with tall stair windows set above entrances featuring panelled double doors in moulded architraves with moulded flat hoods.

The interior retains much original joinery, including panelled doors in panelled reveals and some half-glazed partitions. Stairs positioned on each side of a central hall have steel balustrades with swept moulded handrails.

This office block, together with its associated pump house, represents the finest architectural set piece connected to the National Factories Scheme of the First World War period. The National Factories Scheme was initiated following the creation of the Ministry of Munitions in 1915. The unprecedented scale of demand on British industry had revealed serious weaknesses in explosives manufacture and arms production, necessitating stronger government control. By November 1918 there were 215 National Factories engaged in varied production from shells and explosives to aircraft manufacture and work associated with the nascent biotechnology industry. Holton Heath in Dorset, with its fine group of neo-Georgian laboratory buildings serving as an explosives and biotechnology site, remains the most significant surviving explosives factory of the scheme. A distinction was made between engineering factories and those producing explosives. The purpose-built factories, constituting half of the total 215, typically occupied greenfield sites and exemplified an important step in modern factory design through the relationship of planning to process flow, alongside a holistic approach to worker welfare including leisure, canteen and health facilities. These innovations borrowed from American models and significantly influenced inter-war factory planning. Of the 305,900 employees on these sites in November 1918, 169,700 were women—a factor that influenced the layout of buildings such as the canteen block at Burton, which included segregated areas for male and female workers, a surgery and amenity provision, and overlooked a bowling green that still survives.

The idea of constructing a national factory to produce machine guns was first suggested in September 1917. The project received Treasury approval in October, and a site was purchased at Burton-on-Trent outside the area threatened by daytime air raids. The factory was intended to produce 400 guns per week. However, it was still under construction when the Armistice was signed in November 1918, and the first output was not achieved until January 1919. In May 1919 the factory closed as a working unit and was converted into a store for guns and machinery.

The drawings for the buildings on site were signed off at Enfield Lock, headquarters of the Enfield Small Arms Factory. The factory was provided with a short rail connection to the Branston Sidings on the Birmingham and Derby Railway. Despite being designed for rapid construction using brick and steel-framed construction with slate roofs, it was calculated in August 1918 that a further 18 months would be needed for completion. The present factory now comprises one of a projected four vast North Light sheds and a number of small ancillary buildings, which were not completed until after the First World War and were never used for their intended purpose.

After the war, the War Office placed the site in the top category of 7 National Factories considered for retention and future state use, alongside the Enfield Small Arms Factory, the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham, the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich and the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough (all surviving as historically important sites). It was proposed that the National Machine Gun Factory should be retained as a working unit to maintain a permanent centre of trained machine workers and operational machinery in case of emergency, as the lack of skilled workers had been a major problem in 1914. However, it was eventually decided that workshops at Enfield and Woolwich could be adapted if needed.

Crosse and Blackwell, the preserved food manufacturers based at Soho in London, purchased the site from the government in 1920 and commenced production in 1921 following a dispute over machinery removal. Despite substantial investment, including completion of some factory buildings and houses in the Garden City style designed by Aston Webb for employees on Burton Road, they left in 1925. A silk company subsequently occupied the site, responsible for the now-demolished chimney that towered over the site, but ceased production in 1930. The War Office took over the site in 1937, and the factory became an Ordnance Depot for storage of clothing and equipment. In 1962 the War Office relocated most of its ordnance supplies to Bicester in Oxfordshire.