Frontage Building To Richard Klinger Factory

This building, completed in 1937 to the designs of Wallis Gilbert and partners, served as offices, a cutting shop, toolroom, and storage for the Richard Klinger Factory. Richard Klinger Ltd, founded in Austria in 1893, manufactured gaskets for engines and hydraulic pipelines, as well as water level gauges, valves, and cocks. Constructed in a symmetrical Modern Movement style, the building boasts a steel frame clad with buff brick facings, brown facing bricks laid on end, stone dressings, concrete floors, and asphalted flat roofs. It comprises two storeys and a basement, with 15 windows to the front and 4 to the side elevations, featuring horizontal metal-framed casements throughout. A prominent central three-storey and basement tower incorporates an octagonal clockface, flagpole, watertanks, and the principal staircase. The tower's entrance is defined by a brown brick and stone stepped architrave with a flat stone hood and a flight of steps with attached stone circular planters. Corner windows are present on the ends of the central tower. Wings extending on either side, each featuring six bays, have slightly recessed bays with taller brown brick parapets, seven-light casements, and bands of brown facing bricks between floors. Side elevations primarily feature five-bay casements. The interior includes a main staircase with a metal handrail, though the curved glazed screens to the main entrance hall have been removed. Originally, the central tower housed water tanks, a second-floor company flat intended for visiting Austrian executives, first-floor offices, a ground-floor cutting shop and toolroom, and a basement for storing rubber, asbestos, chemicals, and consumable items. The production building attached to the south, built in 1937 and the 1960s, is not considered suitable for listing.