Vaughan Tapscott Gloving Factory

This is a glove factory, dating from 1884, designed by W.C. Medland for William Vaughan and Sons, a glove-making company. The building is constructed of white brick with red brick and stone dressings, and has a Welsh slate roof with coped gable ends, finials at the apex, corbelled brick eaves, and a brick axial stack.

The building is rectangular in plan. The east end features a central entrance with an office to the right and a staircase to the left. The ground floor includes a central axial passage and a rear-left staircase. The first floor has later partitions, and the attic is open to the roof. A lean-to outshut on the south side may have originally served as an engine house.

The architectural style is Victorian Gothic. The east front has a gabled end with 2:1:2 bays, with the centre projecting. Ground floor windows have shouldered stone arches recessed within pointed brick arches, which themselves have terracotta fish-scale tympana, stone hoodmoulds and cills. A recessed central doorway has a similar brick arch with colonnettes with carved foliage capitals and polished Devon marble shafts, a semi-circular fanlight, and a stone hoodmould with corbel stops in the form of crossed hands. The hoodmoulds continue over narrow flanking lancets, with carved stone medallions above; one depicting crossed gloves, the other a glove-press. Above the centre is a projecting bay with a large stone plate-tracery window, flanked by louvered openings and windows with terracotta fish-scale tympana under red brick pointed arches. The north and south sides, each ten bays wide, feature continuous hoodmoulds over alternating pointed and segmental brick arches to ground floor windows, and over four first-floor windows. Attic windows are in gables, breaking the eaves, with recessed pointed brick arches. The south side includes the lean-to. The rear west gable end has pointed brick arches to the ground floor windows with terracotta tympana and continuous hoodmoulds, an arcade of six lancets on the first floor, and an attic lancet in the gable with an oculus on either side, linked by a hoodmould. A stone string course runs at first-floor window cill level.

Internally, the ground floor features an axial passage with a glazed timber screen on the north side, and belt drive wheels for machinery. Floors are supported on thin cast-iron columns. The first floor includes later partitions. The attic floor is open to a queen-post roof structure. There are two Victorian Gothic staircases, both with arcaded balustrades and chamfered newels with finials. Ceilings are boarded and feature pierced quatrefoil cornices.