Harvey'S Brewery

Harvey's Brewery

Brewery, dating from the early 19th century but almost completely remodelled by William Bradford around 1881, with semi-continuous minor alterations since, particularly to the interior. The building is constructed of red brick with orange dressings, featuring toothed impost bands on the ground floor and between ground and first floors, and a moulded cornice-type impost band on the first floor. Moulded brick cornices crown the plain tiled roofs.

The main block sits to the left of centre, with a four-storey tower on the right-hand part. Above the third stage of the tower is a louvred wooden fourth stage with a board reading HARVEYS to the west. The louvres, arranged 4 by 5, have slightly arched heads and sit beneath a steep hipped roof with bellcast, a very short ridge, and a double conjoined finial with a weather vane to the west. A weather vane marked 1626 T SE was found during excavations for the foundations in 1881.

To the left are three storeys with a parapet-gabled third stage that was added and is recessed. The fenestration is irregular, with two windows on the third floor, two on the second floor and two on the ground floor, symmetrically disposed about a wide arched entrance with double doors and an arched light. All windows are segment-headed except those on the ground floor, and all feature large iron casements with glazing bars and nodal bosses. A single sash window lights the third-floor addition to the left.

A two-storey block to the left has a segmental arch on the ground floor. Doubled half-glazed doors occupy the centre with half-glazed outer panels and glazed top-lights with a large inset fanlight above. Above these is a cantilevered wide octagonal bay with tile-hanging below timber-framing with brick infill. Plain casements sit on the canted sides and centre of the front face, with deep glazed and leaded top lights of stained and bottle-bottom glass. A window on the cant to the right has a louvred shutter. A panelled wooden cornice with small glazed lights inset crowns the hipped roof. The block continues to the right, obscured by later additions on the ground floor, but the original windows with iron glazing and nodal bosses remain above. Further additions extend to the left and behind, as well as projecting towards the west.

A tall octagonal brick tapering chimney rises in the angle; the top third has been rebuilt with an oversailing cornice. Eleven iron straps surround the chimney, which sits on a stone bolection-moulded plinth. The hoist-house on the right corner of the main tower is timber-framed and panelled below with shouldered arched glazing above. It features a bracketed cornice with panelling and glazed roundels. A two-storey, five-bay wing extends to the right with four small iron glazed and nodal-bossed windows on the first floor and a door in the second bay from the right. Single-storey extensions on the ground floor of no special interest extend as a canopy underneath the hoist-house.

Interior features include a mid-19th-century Italianate fireplace in the Board Room. The Malt store retains its malt mill in place. The Tower hoist remains, and the Mash tun room preserves the mash tun in place. A steam engine by Pontifex and Wood of Shoe Lane, London, survives in the form of a single-cylinder horizontal engine, though it is no longer used commercially. The designs by William Bradford for the brewery were published in the Brewer's Journal on 15 November 1881, including a perspective.

Two-storey extension recently erected on to west face of hoist house.