Workshop Complex And Attached Turbine At Sedgwick Powder Works

A workshop complex and attached turbine, dating from the mid to late 19th century with minor 20th-century alterations, formerly part of Sedgwick Powder Works. The building is constructed of random rubble limestone with ashlar dressings, beneath a roof of diminishing courses of Westmorland slate.

The complex has a U-shaped plan, incorporating a central range with a turbine house and workshop to the east, and flanking workshops to the north-west and south-west. The central range features the remains of a tall turbine house at its northern end, including a buttressed north-east corner. A two-storey range of five bays extends southwards, with four tall windows with glazing bar sashes, arranged as 5 panes by 4 panes, beneath wedge lintels. The upper floor accommodates four smaller windows with eight-over-eight panes. Narrower bays projecting forward at the north end contain a doorway on the right. A small square ridge chimney is present. The turbine house adjoins the asymmetrical gable of the five-bay range. The east wall of the turbine house has set-offs to a stepped buttress and a semi-circular arched opening for water from a nearby channel to enter the turbine chamber, via a wooden pentrough within the arch. A large-diameter cast-iron pipe rises from the base of the pentrough into the turbine chamber. A vertical shaft extends upwards from the turbine house, featuring a horizontal bevelled gear wheel that engages with a vertically set wheel and a horizontal drive shaft extending eastward toward the north-western workshop.

The north-western workshop is a single-storeyed building with three wide ground-floor openings beneath flat arched heads with rough voussoirs on the east wall; two are now blocked, and the third has half-glazed double doors. A similar arrangement of openings exists on the rear wall. The south-western workshop, aligned east-west, is a stepped three-bay single-storey range with an off-centre off-shut on the north side. A taller two-bay section features a slated central ridge louvre. The south wall has three doorways with flat arched heads. The north wall has a wide doorway at the west end, with a wall-mounted wooden bending frame on its right. An off-shut to the left of the door contains a triple workshop window with glazing bars, the easternmost pane of which is blocked.

The workshop complex provided support and maintenance facilities for the Sedgwick Powder Works, including functions such as cooperage, fitting, sawing, blacksmithing, and boilermaking, powered by a water turbine fed from a network of watercourses. Sedgwick Powder Works is the most complete of the surviving works in Cumbria, an important centre for the industry in the late 19th century, characterised by dispersed buildings and separation by blast banks. The survival of such a complete complex is unusual.