Hatherton Works

WALSALL

1690/0/10048 HOLTSHILL LANE 27-MAY-05 Hatherton Works

II Factory building for the leather goods industry. 1901. Hickton and Farmer. Red brick with stone dressings and a slate roof. Three storeys. The building forms an L-shape facing onto two streets with an open yard to the rear. At the corner is a chamfered bay and this is combined with half bays on Ball Road and Hotshill Lane to form a frontispiece which is demarked by pilaster strips and effectively turns the corner. At the centre are double panelled doors at ground floor level with a cambered arch to the fanlight. Above them are alternating stone and brick voussoirs beneath a shallow gablet. At first floor level is a cross window and to the second floor is a taller window of 2X3 panes with a cambered head which extends upwards into the gable which, again, has alternating brick and stone voussoirs, as below. There is a gable above this. The half-bays are bordered by pilaster strips and there is a ramped parapet above them to either side of the angle-gable. Facing Ball's Hill are 3 further bays with cambered-headed windows to the ground floor and, to the first and second floors, windows with stone lintels and flat heads. The left bay has a gable into which the second floor window, which has a cambered head, projects. The front to Hotshill Lane is similar, of 5 bays with a gabled bay at centre. Unless otherwise described all of the windows are of timber with 3 lights divided by mullions and a transom. The building is a finely preserved example of a medium-sized leather goods factory. It dates from the period of the final flourishing of the industry in Walsall in the early years of the C20. Source: Ironbridge Institute Research Paper No.44, "The Identification and Evaluation of Surviving Sites Associated with the Leather and Allied Trades", 1993.