Vaughan Tapscott Gloving Factory

GREAT TORRINGTON

852/0/10003 WHITES LANE 04-FEB-03 Vaughan Tapscott Gloving Factory

II

Glove factory. 1884; by W.C. Medland; for William Vaughan and Sons, glove makers. White Marland brick with red brick and stone dressings. Welsh slate roof with coped gable-ends with finials at apex and corbelled brick eaves. Brick axial stack. PLAN: Rectangular on plan. Central entrance at east end with office on right and staircase on left; ground floor with central axial passage and another staircase at rear left. First floor has later partitions; attic storey open to roof. Lean-to outshut on south side might have been the engine house. Victorian Gothic style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attic. East front gable end 2:1:2 bays, centre advanced, ground floor windows have shouldered stone arches in recesses with pointed brick arches with terracotta fish-scale tympana and stone hoodmoulds and cills; central recessed doorway with similar brick arch and colonnettes with carved foliage capitals and polished Devon marble shafts, semi-circular fanlight fanlight and stone hoodmould with corbel stops in form of crossed hands; the hoodmoulds continued over narrow flanking lancets with carved stone medallions above, the right with crossed gloves and the left depicting a glove-press; above the centre breaks forward with a large stone plate-tracery window with a pointed brick arch, louvered openings to left and right and flanking windows with terracotta fish-scale tympana under red brick pointed arches. 10-bay north and south sides have continuous hoodmoulds over alternating pointed and segmental brick arches to ground floor windows and four of the first floor windows recessed with pointed brick arches to the attics in gables breaking the eaves; the south side has lean-to on right. Rear west gable end has pointed brick arches to ground floor windows with terracotta tympana and continuous hoodmoulds, arcade of six lancets on first floor and attic lancet in gable above with oculus on either side linked by hoodmould. Stone stringcourse at first floor window cill level. INTERIOR: Ground floor has axial passage with glazed timber screen on north side and belt drive wheels for machinery. Floors supported on thin cast-iron columns. First floor has later partitions. Attic floor open to queen-post roof structure. Two Victorian Gothic staircases, both with arcaded balustrades and chamfered newels with finials. Boarded ceilings with pierced quatrefoil cornices. SOURCE: Buildings of England, p.460.