The Plough Brewery

The Plough Brewery is a former brewery built in 1868 on the site of an earlier brewery. It is currently used as offices and warehouses, but the original name has been reinstated above the entrance. The main front of the building is four storeys high with a basement, featuring three wide bays with windows arranged in groups of three, two, and three on each floor. The structure is made of yellowish brick with stone dressings and has a fairly low-pitched hipped slate roof. A stone cornice sits above a course of diagonal bricks. The sash windows are set in deep narrow recesses, with the upper windows being segmental and the lower ones round-arched, featuring keystones that overlap the second-floor band. There has been some rebuilding at the centre of the second floor.

A central carriage archway has rusticated stone jambs and voussoirs, with modern doors and a radial fanlight. To the right, there is a three-storey and basement extension with an added modern fourth storey. The thick cast iron area railings, which have twist sections, are supported by square piers with cable mouldings and feature the monogram of brewer Thomas Woodward. The central double gates and side single gates follow the same design.

At the rear, there is a four-bay return to Silverthorne Road, beyond which is a tall one-storey wall with arcaded basement windows. These windows belong to the undercroft beneath the inner courtyard, which is a large groin-vaulted chamber with five by six aisles, supported by low, thick round piers with Romanesque scalloped capitals. The walls of the inner courtyard remain, as do the buildings to the west, although the north stable building was destroyed by fire. Inside the west building, slender cast iron columns with lotus capitals support the upper floor. The wood-framed roof features queen post trusses with raised centres and bracing struts to the principals and centre. On the west side of the front range, there is a rectangular stairwell with a cantilevered staircase, which has twist cast iron balusters and a cast iron handrail, running from the ground floor down to the sub-basement, where there are segmental and barrel-vaulted passages.