Main Offices At Former Royal Naval Cordite Factory

Main Offices at former Royal Naval Cordite Factory

General offices built in 1915 by Fox and Sons of London for the Admiralty. The building is constructed in Flemish bond brick with gauged and rubbed red brick detailing to the flat window arches and front doorcase. It has a hipped plain tile roof swept to cast-iron guttering with flush dentilled eaves. The design follows a Neo-Georgian style across two storeys with a rectangular plan organised around a central hallway.

The north elevation, which faces into the parade ground, features a raised plinth with flanking pilasters to the slightly-projecting outer bays. Each outer bay contains one first-floor window above two ground-floor windows. Three rows of windows flank the central first-floor window and doorway. The main entrance comprises panelled double doors with fanlight set within a fine brick doorcase, featuring a keyed semi-circular arch set between pilasters beneath a flat entablature. The horned sashes to the first floor are 6/6-pane while those to the ground floor are 6/9-pane.

The rear elevation has similar fenestration, with the central bay containing four 2/2-pane sashes set under a semi-circular relieving arch. The side elevations each have seven windows.

Internally, the building features panelled doors set in moulded wood architraves. The principal space is a double-height hall lit by a roof lantern and surrounded on three sides by a first-floor gallery with wooden handrail. The gallery is accessed via semi-circular arched openings with iron balconies on each side. A dog-leg staircase at the rear of the hall has a wooden handrail supported on an iron balustrade.

The building formed part of Holton Heath, the most significant explosives factory constructed for the British government during the First World War. The site was selected by the Admiralty in autumn 1914 and opened in January 1916 for the manufacture of cordite for the Royal Navy. The administrative block and laboratory buildings occupy the principal elements of a formal layout on the west side of the factory, arranged around an open space. The buildings were designed in the Neo-Georgian style, part of the National Factories Scheme introduced by Lloyd George in 1916 for government munitions control. Of the thirty-six explosives factories built under this programme, mostly occupying 200 to 300 acres, Holton Heath is the most significant. With the exception of the National Machine Gun Factory in Burton-on-Trent, this group of buildings at Holton Heath comprises the most important purpose-built complex to have survived from the scheme.