Ken Hall Footwear Ltd (Formerly Newman And Sons)

728/0/10010 NEWMAN STREET 23-APR-04 Ken Hall Footwear Ltd. (formerly Newma n and Sons)

II Boot and shoe factory. c.1873. For M. Newman and Sons. Orange-red brick with stone ashlar dressings. Slate hipped roofs with deep eaves supported on shaped stone eaves brackets. Italianate style. 3 storeys with the entrance bay carried up in the form of a belvedere tower. 7-window front of cast-iron framed windows with round-arched heads to ground floor and segmental above, all with raised key blocks. Raised storey bands and quoins. To centre right is the slightly projecting entrance bay with round-arched moulded stone doorcase, the keyblock having a carved 'N'. The right side is a similar 12-window front and the fronts facing the interior of the yard are similar but without the stone dressings. This yard was infilled with a north-light shed by 1924. INTERIOR. Iron columns support the timber beams of the floors and there is a king-post roof construction. The layout of this working boot and shoe factory is the typical one of making room with closing room above and then finishing room on the top floor. HISTORY. This factory was built for Newman and Sons c. 1873 and they are noted as still operating here in 1906. By 1924 the factory was extended to the west and the yard infilled. In 1929 George Essain and Co were here and in 1937 Bignell Ltd, both boot and shoe manufacturers, as are the present occupants, Ken Hall Footwear Ltd, who began producing here in the 1990's. SOURCES. EH Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Survey, Site Report No.50. Morrison, Kathryn A., with Bond, Ann, 'Built to Last? The Boot and Shoe Buildings of Northamptonshire', forthcoming, pp.12-14.

This well-detailed factory was one of the earliest large boot and shoe factories in Kettering and the Italianate style the fashionable one for factories in the town, no doubt recalling the splendid Manfield factory in Northampton of 1857 (demolished 1982). This example is one of the earliest boot and shoe factories to survive still producing footwear and thus retaining the traditional interior.