34, Farringdon Lane

TQ3182SW 635-1/73/390

ISLINGTON FARRINGDON LANE (East side) No.34

GV II Warehouse and showrooms, now offices. Dated 1875. By Rowland Plumbe for John Greenwood, a watch and clock manufacturer and importer. Beige stock brick set in English bond, rubbed red brick and painted Bath and Portland stone and stucco dressings; roof obscured by parapet, end-wall brick stacks.

Side-hall entrance plan to right: ground and first floors were originally planned as showrooms; upper floors for warehouse accommodation. Elaborate Gothic Revival style. Four storeys with raised basement and attic; 5-window range. Richly decorated elevation clearly divided into two sections, above and below the first floor cornice line; clock to top centre of gable. Ground-floor arches all in pointed form. Steps rise to deeply recessed entrance in far right bay: C20 doors and overlight; scored stucco reveal. To left, ground-floor recessed casements with plain pointed fanlights, archivolts and engaged banded columns and antae. First-floor stucco sill band beneath shouldered segmental-arched casement windows; projecting stucco first floor cornice with floral pattern to frieze. To second and third storeys, two tall arched bays with stucco recess rising through both storeys into which pairs of windows with colonnettes have been inserted. Single arched sashes flank tall arched bays at each floor level. Top floor with single tall gable that cuts through machicolated cornice and balustraded parapet: clock to centre of gable set in roundel; parapet termini piers capped with pyramidal finials. Gable also capped with elaborate finial. Elevation includes many details: to gable, coat of arms of Greenwood family; to tympana above third storey windows are the arms of the City of London and Middlesex, and the Greenwood family motto 'ut prosim'; to second storey tympana symbols of the family trade are included such as the hour glass, the sundial, the sickle and the serpent. Foundation stone reads: 'This stone was laid by Amelia Fisher Granddaughter of John Greenwood June V MDCCCLXXV'.

INTERIOR: altered; mezzanine floor inserted between ground and first floors. This is one of the outstanding Gothic warehouses in the Farringdon Road area and an important survival of the local clock-making and watch-making industry, of which there are few extant examples. Designed by a well-known architect who was responsible for housing work at Noel Park.

(Historians File, English Heritage, London Division: 1990).

Listing NGR: TQ3141782173