The Sirocco Works (Howden Sirocco Engineering works), 81-87 Bridge End, Belfast, Co. Down, BT5 4AG

The Sirocco Works (later Howden Sirocco Engineering Works), Bridge End, Belfast

The Sirocco Works is a large engineering complex situated to the west of Short Strand and south of Bridge End, bordered to the west by a railway embankment and to the south by the River Lagan. It comprises a disparate collection of mainly 20th century buildings, built across roughly a century and much altered and added to throughout that period. The complex is of considerable industrial archaeological interest, and its prominent gable facing the River Lagan makes it a recognisable Belfast landmark.

Origins and Historical Background

The works began life in 1881 as Samuel Davidson & Co., founded by Samuel Davidson, who was born in Belfast in 1846 and grew up at the family home of Turf Lodge, close to his father's corn mill at Bridge End. Davidson left school at 15, entered a surveyor's office, and acquired a knowledge of architecture and railway engineering. In 1864, at the invitation of his cousin James Davidson, he travelled to India to assist in managing tea estates in which the Davidson family had an interest. Dissatisfied with the slow, laborious process of withering and drying tea leaf over open charcoal fires, he set about devising a more efficient method. By 1869 he had developed and patented a cylindrical drying machine, and in 1870 obtained a further patent for a tea roller. He continued to refine the drying device over the following years, constructing and modifying machines with his own hands, but Indian foundries were ill suited to his purposes. In 1877–78 he returned to Belfast to have his latest design constructed by Ritchie, Hart & Co. With this improved dryer he went back to India, demonstrating it at various plantations and taking orders from estate owners.

To fulfil those orders Davidson again employed Ritchie, Hart & Co., but in 1881 he founded his own firm to take over manufacture of the dryers. The new firm was established next to the family mills at Bridge End and initially consisted of a single shed and seven workmen. The scope this gave him for further development led eventually to experiments with introducing a fan into the drying process, which ended in 1898 with Davidson's near-complete redesign of that component and the invention of the Sirocco Forward Bladed Centrifugal Fan. The Sirocco Fan proved a turning point in the company's fortunes: its potential was quickly recognised far beyond tea drying, and it was adapted for use in mine and ship ventilation and dust extraction in factories. By the beginning of the 20th century, the success of both the tea dryer and the centrifugal fan had produced phenomenal growth and spread the Sirocco name around the world. During the First World War, almost all ships in the Allied and German navies were fitted with Sirocco fans. Samuel Davidson was knighted by King George V in 1921, but died a few months later. The firm continued to prosper, developing new fan types including radial bladed, backward bladed, aerofoil axial flow, aerofoil centrifugal, and auto-variable axial flow. By the 1950s the company had also moved into air conditioning equipment, and by the mid-1960s some 1,500 workers were employed at the Bridge End site, with Davidson companies operating in Australia and South Africa and products manufactured under licence across Europe, India, Argentina, and New Zealand. In 1988 the company was acquired by The James Howden Group and renamed Howden Sirocco. In that same year a redesigned Northern Bank £50 note was issued depicting Samuel Davidson. In 1997 Howden Sirocco was sold to Charter Plc, and in October 1999 the Bridge End site itself was sold.

Development of the Site

Davidson's original 1881 workshop consisted of a single shed, undoubtedly sited just to the west of his father's corn mill, with Bridge End to the north, the River Lagan to the south, and terraced housing to the west. An illustration in Edward Maguire's short history of the company, The Sirocco Story (published c.1963), shows a long rectangular structure with a curved roof, though it is unclear whether this is a contemporary image or conjecture. It appears to have been supported on Belfast trusses. By the late 1890s the single shed had been replaced by two lengthy gabled rows visible on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map and depicted in a painting of the site possibly dating from 1898. These rows had sections ranging from three to five storeys but were relatively narrow, only three bays wide. Small sections of both survive.

In around 1910–12 a new complex of buildings was added to the south, where the site borders the Lagan. This complex was substantially expanded in the 1920s by industrial engineer Alfred W. Brown and again in the 1940s. By the 1960s the works had assumed an L-shaped plan, with the late 19th century rows running north to south and the 1910-onwards extensions running east to west along the river frontage. The site was then entered from Bridge End to the north, past the admin block originally built in 1900 and extended in 1950. A cluster of late 19th century terraces lay between the works and the raised railway embankment to the west, and Richardson's Chemical Manure Works occupied the land between the east side of the works and Short Strand.

During the 1970s many surrounding properties were vacated, and by around 1980 the houses to the west and south were demolished and the land acquired by the company. The former Richardson's site was also acquired and cleared. The company proceeded to modernise much of the works, demolishing the greater part of the old 1890s rows and constructing a massive new hangar-like assembly shed. With the demolition of Quin Street, the main entrance was relocated from Bridge End to Short Strand.

The Buildings

The current complex is described below broadly from north to south.

The large hangar-like assembly shed, erected around 1981, is rectangular in plan with a gabled roof. It is constructed of corrugated metal cladding on a brick base and is largely featureless apart from several large doorway openings fitted with metal roller shutters.

To the north, beside what was the original entrance from Bridge End, is the administration block. This is a two-storey brick and stucco building dating from 1900, now largely plain in appearance. Its east façade is rendered and appears to retain its original flat-arched window openings, though fitted with modern frames. Its south gable is now mainly blank — rendered, with only a ground-floor door opening — following the demolition of a larger building to which it was formerly connected. The north gable, facing Bridge End, is in brick and has a slightly Mannerist appearance, with projecting brick courses and pilasters. To the ground floor of this gable are two large segmental-headed windows, with three smaller segmental-headed windows to the first floor, and a large datestone. To the west, the 1900 block merges with a substantial three-storey extension added in 1950, also in brick but entirely modernist in character. The north façade of this extension has a very long strip window at both ground and first floor level. The second floor is recessed well back from the north façade; this upper section — which may post-date 1950 — is timber-clad and largely glazed to both north and south, with a shallow pitched gabled roof. To the south of the 1950 section is a two-storey gabled section in brick, attached to the rear of the original 1900 portion, with a series of small windows to both floors on its south façade, some door openings at ground level, and an apparently blank west gable. The west gable of the 1950 section has several informal projections in brick, likely stairwells.

To the south of the hangar-like shed are the remnants of two parallel gabled brick rows, the last surviving portions of two much longer rows dating from around 1890. The eastern row is three storeys tall with many segmental-headed windows (now with modern frames) to its east and west façades. The western row is slightly shorter, roughly two and a half storeys, with similar window openings to its east façade; a series of modern metal-clad gabled sections have been added to its west façade.

Further south, these remnant rows connect to a sprawling conglomeration of large assembly sheds, much altered and extended over the years. These sheds are mainly in brick and mainly gabled, with large areas of rooflight glazing to many. The earliest sections are at the very south of the site, with later portions to the north and east. The later portions are largely metal-clad, particularly those to the east, and are largely plain. Of the earlier brick sections, the most prominent and arguably the most architecturally interesting is the southernmost building, whose west-facing gable — of slightly Mannerist character — carries the words "Sirocco Works" in raised letters of what appears to be metal, in a typeface somewhere between late Art Nouveau and early Art Deco. This building looms large over the River Lagan and is considered something of a Belfast landmark. To the south, this building was formerly linked to a slightly lower section that may have contained an engine house; only the tall, square, brick chimney of that section now remains.

To the west of the complex, between the works and the railway embankment, the ground is currently vacant. Until around 1980 there were terraced dwellings here and the former street patterns can still be discerned.

Commemorative Features

To the east of the original Bridge End entrance there is a section of walling bearing two painted metal plaques: one commemorating employees of the works who fell in the First World War, and the other dedicated to J. S. Davidson, a former General Manager of the works who was killed in action in 1916.

Bridge End: Historical Context

Bridge End takes its name from its position at the eastern end of what was originally the Long Bridge, a roughly one-third of a mile long structure built in the 1680s to link the growing market town of Belfast, on the County Antrim side, directly to County Down. At that time the small village of Ballymacarrett lay at the Down end of the bridge, while the area now known as Bridge End — broadly the land between Short Strand and the Lagan — was a muddy bank, with Short Strand itself a country strand running southward along the riverside.

Industrial development of the area began in 1776 when Benjamin Edwards, a glass-maker probably from Dublin, was granted title to any land he could reclaim on the eastern banks of the Long Bridge. By 1781 he had reclaimed a small plot and built a flint glass-works upon it, described as equal to any in England and producing all kinds of enamelled, cut, and plain wine glasses, decanters, cruets, salts, and goblets. In 1785, together with Belfast merchant Thomas Greg, he built an iron foundry just to the north-east of the glass-works, initially making equipment for the glass manufactory. A year later, in 1786, a second glass-works was established by John Smylie immediately beside Edwards's works, making window glass; Smylie's cone was reputedly some 110 feet tall, making it the largest in the British Isles. The extent of this early development is recorded on James Williamson's 1791 map of Belfast, which shows both Edwards's and Smylie's cone glass-houses, a substantial area of reclaimed or reclamation-in-progress land to the west either side of the Long Bridge, a new rope walk to the east beyond the strand, and the iron foundry to the north of the rope walk.

In 1800 Smylie's works were absorbed by Edwards, who died in 1812; the business passed to his son Benjamin junior, while the foundry was leased to Messrs. Chaine & Young. In 1824 the entire Bridge End concern — by then including a large dwelling house, warehouses, a glass-house, the foundry, and nine two-storey workers' dwellings built by Edwards for managers and workmen — was sold. By this stage the reclaimed land to the north had also accommodated a salt works and a vitriol works. Further east, Ballymacarrett was expanding rapidly and by the early 1830s had a population of 10,000, some 800 houses, and four churches.

In 1843 the Long Bridge was demolished and replaced by the much shorter Queen's Bridge, designed by Charles Lanyon and John Frazer. By the late 1850s a corn mill had been established by James Davidson immediately to the west of the old glass-works (by then operating as Ross, O'Connor & Co.), and an oil and bone-mill and chemical manure manufactory had been added by Joseph Richardson to the immediate east, bordering Short Strand. A second glass-works stood just to the south, established in 1823 and later acquired by William and Thomas McCormick, and a pottery lay to the west. To the north of Bridge End were two chemical works (one being the old vitriol works), the Belfast, Holywood and Bangor Railway terminus, and Queen's Quay on the Lagan shore.

By the closing decades of the 19th century the character of the area had changed considerably. Both glass-works had closed, largely due to rising excise duties on their products, and their site was absorbed into the much enlarged Richardson's Chemical Manure Co. James Davidson's Queen's Bridge Flour Mills had been joined to the east by his son Samuel's engineering works. The railway line had also been extended across Bridge End on an embankment that cut through the existing street grid, and a large iron foundry — the Union Foundry — had been established on the river bank south of Queen's Bridge.

From around 1900 onwards much of the area south of Bridge End and west of Short Strand was gradually absorbed by the expanding Sirocco Works. The Davidson flour mills closed in the early years of the 20th century. Richardson's Chemical Manure Works expanded as far east as Quin Street, and to the south of Quin Street were housing and a Corporation yard and workshop dating from around 1915–20, whose brick turrets still stood at the time of survey. The last recognisable remnant of the old Georgian glass-works, a large brick-built cone, stood within the manure works until it collapsed in October 1937. By the late 1970s much of the housing between the railway line and the Sirocco Works had been abandoned, and by 1980–81 the remaining dwellings were demolished and the site acquired by the company. The former Richardson's site was similarly acquired, so that by the time the works was taken over by the James Howden Group in 1988 it dominated much of the Bridge End area. Road development to the immediate north of Bridge End and the construction of apartment blocks on the river bank to the south-east of Queen's Bridge in the late 1990s cleared away many of the remaining industrial sites. The sale of the Howden Sirocco site in October 1999 effectively completed the transformation of what had been, for two centuries, a crucible of Belfast industry.