Lotus Factory, 184 Newry Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT34 3NB

Lotus Factory, 184 Newry Road, Banbridge, Co Down

This is a former shoe factory complex on the eastern side of what was formerly the main Belfast to Dublin road, at Yellow Hill on the southern outskirts of Banbridge. The principal office block is a two-storey brick and reinforced-concrete building in the Modern style, built in 1950 by the Ministry of Commerce to designs by architects W.D.R. & R.T. Taggart. The complex also retains the western façade of the original factory floor, a mid-1960s gatehouse in the same Modern style, and a tall cylindrical chimney of the same period. The main factory floor and its extensions were demolished in 2009. The complex is of considerable local and industrial interest, having been one of the largest employers in the Banbridge area for more than fifty years and, for a period, one of the largest shoe producers in the United Kingdom.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The factory was built as a Government advance factory by the Ministry of Commerce and completed in December 1950 at a cost of approximately £96,000, with a total floor area of 33,100 square feet. It was designed so that the factory roof would not require intermediate supporting columns to impede the floor. Down Shoes Ltd, incorporated in 1947 as the Northern Ireland subsidiary of Lotus Ltd — a long-established English shoe manufacturer based in Stafford and Northampton — had begun operations in January 1947 at a former brewery in Castlewellan Street, Banbridge. The new factory at Yellow Hill was probably occupied by Down Shoes in early 1951. A contemporary scale model of the original premises, made by the renowned model makers Bassett-Lowke Ltd of Northampton and now displayed in the foyer, shows a two-storey Modernist office block with an adjoining single-storey sawtooth-roof factory, together with a separate boiler room and chimney.

Over the following sixteen years the factory was extended at least three times under the Ministry of Commerce. A first extension completed in November 1958 added 31,000 square feet — almost doubling the original floor area. A further 8,000 square feet was added in January 1965, and a third extension of 22,300 square feet was completed in March 1968 at a cost of nearly £160,000. By this stage the original factory floor had been extended eastwards, a two-storey addition had been made to its southern elevation, and a new boiler house and taller freestanding chimney had been erected at the rear; the replacement chimney, reported to be 160 feet high, was built by Christie Brown. All these extensions are recorded on the 1971 Ordnance Survey map.

The factory was visited by Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon on 25 May 1967, accompanied by Lord Erskine, Governor of Northern Ireland, and shown around by Mr James Bostock, Chairman of the Lotus Group, and Mr K.J. Kucek, Managing Director of Down Shoes and a Czech émigré. In 1968, Down Shoes acquired a second Government advance factory on Scarva Road, Banbridge, and began producing men's footwear. By 1970 the company had become one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the British Isles, with a workforce of over 1,000 people and a weekly output of approximately 40,000 pairs of ladies' and men's shoes, sandals and slippers. Down Shoes was taken over by the Argo Caribbean Group in 1972, becoming a subsidiary of Debenhams PLC (part of the Burton Group) the following year. The Scarva Road factory was vacated in 1982 or 1983, after which Winner Shoes Ltd took over that site. In 1986 the Yellow Hill factory was purchased by the Fii Group, one of Britain's largest shoe producers, trading under the Lotus (ladies' shoes), Frank Wright (men's) and Fii labels. Faced with increasing foreign competition, the factory closed in March 2003.

In 2009, Lotus Homes, part of the Murdock Group, obtained planning permission for a £30 million redevelopment of the site for houses and apartments. As part of this scheme, most of the original factory floor and all the extensions were demolished in 2009. The former office block was refurbished as offices for Lotus Homes in 2010–11. The western end of the former factory floor is to be redeveloped as apartments, with the surrounding area laid out for housing. The gatehouse and chimney are to be retained as part of the scheme.

OFFICE BLOCK

The two-storey office block is aligned east to west along the southern side of the site. Its eastern and western sections are slightly taller than the central section, but all three have flat concrete roofs behind low concrete-coped blocking courses. The walls are of red brick throughout. The reinforced-concrete structural frame is concealed behind brick cladding.

The raised western section contains the principal entrance: a flight of four granite steps leads up to a three-panel rotating entrance door set within chamfered concrete jambs, with a semicircular concrete canopy above and small wall lights to either side. The door jambs continue upward to form the jambs of the first-floor window opening above, which contains a canted 3-by-7-paned metal window set slightly back, with a deep concrete apron and head and a small rectangular canopy over. A vertical flagpole rises from the roof above. On the northern cheek of this section is a 3-by-8-paned window lighting the main stairwell.

The southern elevation is characterised by two continuous rows of metal windows — 3-by-3-paned at ground floor and 3-by-4-paned at first floor — set between structural reinforced-concrete uprights, all with brick-clad metal heads and a shared concrete cill. At the western end, the first floor steps back to form a balcony, accessed from inside via four sets of double-leaf 4-paned French windows. At ground-floor level on the western end, a three-quarter attached circular bay projects from the façade, featuring a continuous row of fifteen 1-by-3-paned metal windows with a shared concrete head and cill. The flat concrete roof of this bay forms a continuation of the first-floor balcony, along which runs a five-bar metal balustrade. The projecting bay is surrounded by a raised flower bed retained behind a concrete-coped wall.

Towards the eastern end of the southern façade are three 1-by-3-paned windows at each floor level, each with shared concrete heads and cills. The eastern end section is set back slightly from the main façade and is marginally taller to accommodate an internal water tank and lift motor. It contains a 1-by-5-paned timber back entrance door with matching 1-by-5-paned sidelights under a concrete head, protected by a flat felted canopy. Above is a 3-by-8-paned metal window with concrete head and cill, lighting the back stairwell, first-floor landing, and service room above. A narrow strip of grass runs the full length of this elevation, with a tarmacadam car park beyond.

The eastern gable was formerly abutted by a two-storey factory extension added in the 1960s. This has been removed and the wall rendered over. Ground-floor and first-floor doorways into the former extension have been infilled and rendered, but remain visible externally. The northern elevation was formerly abutted by the main factory floor; after demolition of the latter, the exposed wall was rendered over. Some original openings were infilled and others modified in this process. As altered, the northern elevation now has five sets of 3-by-3-paned double-glazed uPVC windows at ground floor between pilastered structural columns, four sets of narrow 3-by-3-paned uPVC windows at first floor, and two further windows to the service room at the eastern end.

Roof: concrete. Rainwater goods: steel. Walls: brick. Windows: metal and uPVC.

FACTORY FLOOR (SURVIVING REMNANT)

The single-storey factory floor ran along and beyond the northern wall of the office block but has been almost entirely demolished, with only the western wall and a small section of roof truss surviving. The western wall comprises a reinforced-concrete frame faced with brick. Eight contiguous horizontal window panels run along it, all sharing a common concrete head and cill. The 3-by-5-paned metal windows, each with a 1-by-2-paned central opening, are now visible from the inside only, having been sheeted over externally with photographs pasted onto the panels. At the top left corner of this façade is an electric clock whose hour indicators and hour and minute hands are mounted directly on the brickwork. The northern end of the façade returns as a two-storey flat-roofed brick building, of which only the western end now survives.

Abutting the left (northern) end of this façade is a single-storey loading bay added in the mid-1960s, slightly lower than the main façade and projecting slightly from it. A low concrete-coped blocking course hides its flat concrete roof, which oversails to the north and east. The walls are of textured brick. There are metal roller shutter doors on the northern and eastern elevations, and a 2-by-4-paned metal window on the eastern elevation. At the north-western corner of the loading bay is a three-quarter attached circular granite gate pier with a vertical strip light embedded in it. This is an original feature that was relocated to its present position when the loading bay was built. The corresponding pier on the opposite side has been lost, along with the gates. The entire façade is fronted by a raised strip of grass retained behind a low brick wall.

The single surviving bay behind the western façade retains its original roof structure: a triangulated glazed steel truss running north to south across the full width of the floor, without intermediate supporting columns.

GATEHOUSE

A small single-storey, single-bay gatehouse stands adjacent to the goods entrance from the main road, probably erected in the mid-1960s. It has a flat concrete roof with a four-bar metal balustrade around its edge. The walls are of brick, curved on the principal western elevation. The frontage has continuous fenestration comprising eight top-opening 1-by-3-paned metal panels with a shared concrete head and cill. The southern elevation has a plain sheeted timber door with a rectangular overlight above. There is a small window on the rear eastern elevation.

Roof: concrete. Rainwater goods: steel. Walls: brick. Windows: metal.

CHIMNEY

A free-standing two-stage chimney of mid-1960s date, replacing the original. It is of cylindrical profile and stands to its full height, with a projecting circular concrete crown. It is of concrete construction with an outer skin of brick. The lower stage contains three openings for flues (now removed) and for cleaning-out purposes. A lightning conductor runs down its side.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND ENTRANCES

The site is bounded by a brick wall surmounted by a painted metal vertical railing. The goods entrance is at the north-west and the office entrance at the south-west. Both entrances have concrete-capped square brick gate piers with replacement gates.