Walsall Conduits Site

BRISTOL

ST5873SE NARROW LEWINS MEAD 901-1/11/145 (North West side) 08/02/88 Walsall Conduits Site

II

Also known as: The Sugar House LEWINS MEAD. Sugar refinery and warehouse, now office and warehouse. C18, C19 and early C20, including right-hand facade of 1922. Brick with Portland dressings to the right section, rendered rubble to the left, with pantile hipped roofs. Complex of buildings with right-hand double-depth plan office, left-hand warehouse, trapezoidal courtyard to rear with engine house and stack. Edwardian Baroque style office facade. 3 storeys; 5-window range office, 4-window range warehouse. The office has a symmetrical front with the middle 3 windows and roof set forward, plinth, quoins, plat band and second-floor sill band, and moulded timber eaves cornice. The doorway has a large shell hood on acanthus brackets to a boarded overlight and double 6-panel doors. Flanking windows have quoins, upper ones with keyed architraves and ashlar aprons, cut on the second floor by the tall key beneath, with 8/8-pane sashes, and 6/6-pane sashes to plain outer windows. The right return has a 2-window range, with a gabled rear block. The steep roof has a flat, leaded top. The parapeted warehouse has blocked ground-floor windows, a right-hand carriage arch with 11 stepped voussoirs, cambered heads to the windows above, flat to those to the left, to 2-light casements with glazing bars. Roof in 3 hipped sections. Former engine house has a square brick chimney. INTERIOR not inspected; office section reported as having a ground-floor left-hand room with complete C18 fielded panelling, including eared fire surround; structure variously timber or steel-framed. The central section of this block appears to be the earlier part, late C18-early C19. Details of the warehouse include a mixture of rubble and brick walling with a single cast-iron column, one timber and one brick post carrying a long flitch beam; first floor has 6 chamfered wood posts with pillows to a longitudinal beam, second floor similar carrying slight C19 king post trusses; concrete ground floor, wide plank first and second floors. A C20 three-storey flat-roofed concrete and steel block returns to back of the courtyard. HISTORICAL NOTE: Bristol was an important centre for sugar refining and several firms latterly operated in the Lewins Mead area; this complex appears to be one of those and, though altered, is of interest as an exceptionally complete and historically important testament to this industry. (Buchanon and Cossons: Industrial Archaeology of the Bristol Region: Bristol: 1969-).

Listing NGR: ST5865273251