20-26, St Michaels Road

This is a double boot and shoe factory, constructed around 1890, and now used for other commercial purposes. It is built of red brick with a blue brick plinth and stone lintels and sills, topped with a slate roof. The building is three storeys high with a basement. The design incorporates a pair of semi-detached factories with a central fire wall projecting above the roof line. Wings projecting from the gable ends are situated at the rear, along with various infill extensions.

The front elevation facing St Michael's Road features a 10-window range at the first floor, composed of wooden mullion and transom windows with small panes of glass. A taking-in door replaces one of the windows on the far left. Similar windows are present above and below, also with taking-in doors. Cranes are positioned on the second floor on the far left and right, and ground-floor entrance doors are present. Basement windows have cast-iron frames. Notable features include prominent eaves, coped gables including the central wall above the roof line, and truncated gable end stacks on the front roof slope. The gable ends are blank, while the rear of the building has a variety of doors and casements, some large.

Historical records indicate that in 1896, Beale and Co. occupied No. 24, and Wheeler, Hull and Co. occupied Nos. 20 and 22. The symmetrical front and central dividing wall strongly suggest the initial design was as a double factory. The site was known as the Unicorn works in 1899, 1905, and 1912, and by 1916, Beale and Co. were listed at the Unicorn Boot Works. The buildings were vacant in 1928 and by 1937 housed a printers and a woollen warehouse, reflecting the industry’s decline from the 1920s.

This relatively unaltered ‘double factory’ is a rare survival. The design, where plot sizes permitted, resembled semi-detached houses. It contributes significantly to the group of buildings representing the boot and shoe industry in Northampton, which was the industry’s center. Nearby are the former G. T. Hawkins factory opposite and the Trickers factory further down St Michael's Road.