Ringer'S Tobacco Factory

Ringer’s Tobacco Factory is a building of group value, constructed in 1883 by H Crisp and HCM Hirst for Edwards, Ringer and Biggs, a tobacco manufacturing company. It is built of snecked Pennant rubble with limestone and red Mansfield dressings, stone and brick lateral stacks, and a slate hipped roof. The building follows a double-depth plan arranged around a central atrium. It incorporates Venetian Gothic and French Empire styles, with a deliberate use of colour in the construction.

The building is two storeys and has a 15-window front. A symmetrical facade features shallow, pedimented centre and end bays, marked by vermiculated pilasters. A ground-floor arcade consists of semicircular arches with coloured voussoirs, Mansfield shafts on rock-faced granite pedestals, foliate capitals, and 20th-century glazing. The central bay has a wide stilted segmental arch, flanked by smaller arches with rusticated spandrels; the end bays have similar arches, that to the left incorporating a cast-iron fanlight. First-floor windows are spaced irregularly above the ground floor, set within flat ashlar surrounds and small balustrades with a tripartite window in the middle, topped by a dentil cornice. A dentil string course and cornices run beneath the second-floor windows, which have semicircular arches in ashlar surrounds and keys, forming a Venetian window in the centre, beneath a bracketed cornice and balustrade with ball finials. The central pediment sits above a smaller segmental pediment, both featuring swag and cartouche motifs within their tympana. Steep pyramidal roofs rise from the pedimented bays, topped by a widow’s walk in the centre. Side elevations are of brick with stone lintels and bands of black brick.

The interior contains an entrance hall with a dogleg staircase, a central glazed atrium supported by corbelled cast-iron shafts with water-leaf capitals, and rear cast-iron stairs.