Vulcan Works

725/0/10040 GUILDHALL ROAD 23-APR-04 34-38 Vulcan Works

GV II Engineering works, at present vacant. c.1875. For Henry Mobbs, engineers. Red brick with painted stone and brick dressings and parapeted roof. 2 storeys to Guildhall Road, and single- and 2-storey north light sheds to rear with glazed, pantile and corrugated sheet roofs. The front is a 9-window range at first floor of iron-framed (some boarded) windows with round-arched heads and hoodmoulds. On the ground floor there are carriage entrances to left and centre right, the office entrance to centre under a bracketed hood, and 3 windows to left and one to right of this which have pilaster mullions and are boarded at present. A further entrance and shuttered window to far right. The front is characterised by giant pilasters rising through both storeys to a bracketed brick cornice, though in the centre 3 bays they end at window soffit level thus forming an arcade to mark the main office entrance. The sloping site probably resulted in the unusual plan of offices, etc., on the ground floor with workshops formed on the first floor on a level which continues through to the rear. HISTORY. The Vulcan Iron Works were built for the firm of Henry Mobbs who were engineers whose productions include boot and shoe machinery. The firm remained here until the later 1890's when the north range became Phipps and Co. Leather Warehouse and the rest was vacant. Phipps remained in part because the Goad insurance maps of 1928 and 1956 identify their presence as shoe mercers. It is also noted that Phipps were here in 1961 for footwear components. The central section remained as an engineering works owned by Crossley Brothers. The successive Goad editions show that their goods entrance was at the rear with a yard entrance onto Fetter Street. SOURCES. EH Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Industry Survey, Site Report No. 167.

This former engineering works is the best survival of the 14 extant examples of the type producing boot and shoe machinery as identified in the EH Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe Industry Survey. It has a well-detailed and impressive front to Guildhall Road and it is also an unusual example of a surviving town-centre engineering works. Its remarkably central position means that it forms a significant commercial and civic group with No. 27 opposite (q.v.), the entrance to the Theatre Royal (q.v.), now Derngate Theatre, further up the street, and with The Guildhall (q.v.) closing the view at the top.