The Goldcroft Glove Company Works And Entrance Gates

ST51SW 6/21

YEOVIL CP EASTLAND ROAD (West side) The Goldcroft Glove Company Works and entrance gates

12.10.73

• II

Works - leather/gloves. Dated 1855 (date plaque on wall of original main block). Local stone random coursed, with some brick piers with timber infill at high level; slated roofs. The original and main block (along Eastland Road) of 4-storeys with double pitch gable end valley roof, has 6-arched windows (now all blocked) at the lowest level, with 2-windows with semi-circular arched heads at first and second floor levels as well as central doors to both levels, with a hoist and roller tackle projecting bar. Matching return elevations. Internally brick piers run up through the full height of the building. The floors are level, with broad elm boards except at attic level, where small boards alternate with spaces between joists: this wooden upper storey was used for drying the wool from the skins, and these gaps, coupled with louvres in the timber infill of the outer walls, assisted the process. The machinery, originally steam-powered, now driven by electricity and is of early C20, and includes combing tanks and dressing drums. A second later building runs parallel to this main block at the rear of the site, and is joined to it by a C20 single storey link block constructed of concrete blocks with corrugated asbestos sheet roof. At the main entrance off Eastland Road a pair of slid cast iron gate piers and open ironwork gates. This gloveworks is one of the few survivors of what was Yeovil's principal industry, and probably the best and most complete illustration of the process: hence its inclusion.

Listing NGR: ST5612416203