Portview Trading Estate, 310 Newtownards Rd, Belfast, Co Down, BT4 1HE

Portview Trading Estate, 310 Newtownards Road, Belfast

This is a former linen spinning mill complex erected in 1911 by Jaffe Brothers on the Newtownards Road in the Ballymacarret townland, on the County Down side of the River Lagan. Construction began and was largely completed in 1911, with production confirmed underway by 3 February 1912. The complex is architecturally typical of late 19th and early 20th century spinning mills: brick-built, with regular fenestration across all floors and modest decorative brickwork detailing. A significant amount of the original fabric survives largely intact. The complex was built for spinning flax tow and yarn, and the different floors were used for sequential stages of the spinning process. The attached engine house illustrates how the mill machinery was powered, and its direct abutment against the main mill building reflects the direct mechanical drive between engine and machinery. The structural system is also of particular interest, appearing to comprise flat concrete ceilings supported on exposed I-beams rather than the more commonly found brick jack arches. The mill is now used as small business units under the name Portview Trading Estate.

The complex as listed comprises five elements: Block A, Block B, the Engine House, Block C, and Block D.

BLOCK A

Block A is a three-storey, multi-bay brick building aligned north-south along the eastern side of the site. Its walls are of brick with a sandstone-coped brick cornice and a shallow blocking course above, also coped with sandstone; this detailing wraps around all elevations except the north. Cast-metal downpipes are present throughout.

The west elevation, which faces Block B, is upwards of 18 bays long. The ground floor and first floor have miscellaneous doors and windows; many of the windows retain their original five-by-four-pane metal frames set in segmental arched heads with sandstone cills, though a few have been replaced or infilled. The second-floor windows are one-by-two-paned with flat concrete heads. A first-floor loading door with jib appears approximately halfway along. Two footbridges cross from Block B, entering between first- and second-floor levels. The yard between Blocks A and B is cobbled, and a large metal weighbridge is set into the ground at the Newtownards Road end of this elevation.

The south gable is seven openings wide. The ground floor has three landscape windows, all sheeted over (with photographs of the mill when operational fixed to them) and a roller-shutter door at the right. The first-floor windows each have a single-pane lower half and a three-by-two-pane upper half. The east elevation could not be inspected in detail but appears to be fenestrated in the same manner as the west. The north gable is blank; there was originally a single-storey extension at this end, the ghost of which is still visible.

Above the original flat concrete roof, a three-bay sawtooth roof clad in profiled sheeting (asbestos or fibre cement) has been added as a later upward extension, running the full length of the building except for the two southernmost bays. This sawtooth roof has skylights along its west-facing pitches.

BLOCK B

Block B is a four-storey, multi-bay brick building aligned north-south down the middle of the site. It has a flat concrete roof with a sandstone-coped blocking course all around. The brick walls carry a sandstone-coped brick cornice around the base of the blocking course. Between the second and third floors, a second sandstone-coped brick cornice doubles as a common sandstone cill course for the top floor windows. Both cornices extend around all elevations except the north. Cast-metal downpipes drain from parapet gutters.

The principal elevation faces east toward Block A and is upwards of 30 bays long. The leftmost bay contains a stairwell with two small ground-floor windows and a large four-by-five metal-framed window to each of the upper floors. Above the top window of this bay is a circular dressed-sandstone datestone inscribed "1911". The ground floor has miscellaneous doorways and windows; the upper floors have regularly-spaced windows, most with four-by-five-pane metal frames, shallow segmental arched heads, and sandstone cills. A covered metal-and-concrete footbridge connects from Block A at second-floor level near the south end of this elevation. A metal-clad stairwell and a second covered footbridge have been added further along. At the north end of this elevation an open steel fire-escape ladder is accessed through doors in the end openings.

The north gable is three openings wide, all windows except a roller-shutter door at the middle ground-floor position, which may be a later insertion. The south gable has three windows and a door at ground floor, four windows at first floor, and three windows each at second and third floors. The blocking course at the south end has a scalloped parapet. Attached metal letters on the right-hand end of the first floor read "Portview Trade Centre". The east elevation has regularly-spaced windows to all floors but could not be inspected in detail.

ENGINE HOUSE

The engine house is a single-storey-over-basement former engine room that wraps around the south-west corner of Block B. It has a flat concrete roof with a blocking course around it, coped with sandstone blocks. The brick walls carry a sandstone-coped brick cornice around the base of the blocking course. Cast-metal downpipes drain from parapet gutters. There is a raised section to the roof whose precise function is uncertain; it may have housed a rope drive transmitting power from the engine to machinery inside the mill.

The east elevation contains the entrance, reached by a flight of granite steps with brick sides coped with chamfered granite blocks. Tubular steel handrails have been added. The entrance has double-leaf semi-glazed doors with semi-glazed sidelights and a rectangular overlight, above which is a dressed sandstone infill to a semicircular brick arch with a dressed sandstone drip mould. The blocking course curves over the door head and is embellished with scrolled sandstone stop ends.

The south elevation has a large semicircular spoked timber window at its centre, with a sandstone drip mould and sandstone cill. At ground level is a small segmental-headed spoked timber window, which presumably illuminates the basement. The wall at this lower level is painted. Cast-iron cartwheel protectors at both ends of this elevation are inscribed "Union / Foundry / Belfast". The west elevation has three regularly-spaced, similarly detailed high- and low-level windows. The north elevation was not inspected.

BLOCK C

Block C is a single-storey, nine-bay brick building with sawtooth corrugated-asbestos roofs. All openings have flat concrete heads and concrete cills.

BLOCK D

Block D is a single-storey brick building of trapezoidal plan. Its brick walls have an advanced purple-brick base course and a brick blocking course around the flat concrete roof. The east and north elevations have a brick cornice topped with sandstone coping blocks along the base of the blocking course. Large square-headed shopfronts, all fitted with roller shutters, face the east and south elevations. The north elevation formerly had segmental-headed openings, most of which are now infilled with brick or otherwise modified. The west elevation is blank. A cast-iron cartwheel guard at the south-east corner is inscribed "Gregg, Sons & Phenix [sic] / Union Foundry / Belfast".

SETTING

The south end of the site is bounded by Newtownards Road, which is lined with shops at this point. The east side is bounded by the back yards of a two-storey terrace of houses along Witham Street. The north side is bounded by a steel security fence along Carew Street, with a small two-storey terrace at its north-west end. The west side is bounded by a former industrial premises previously occupied by Messrs Shorts.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The site was undeveloped ground as shown on the 1902 Ordnance Survey map and was surrounded by terraces of houses on all sides. The terrace along the Newtownards Road frontage had been demolished by 1911, possibly to make way for the new factory. The mill was built and initially operated by Jaffe Brothers, linen exporters of Bedford Street, Belfast. During the First World War, munitions were also produced on the premises. The 1919 Ordnance Survey map captions the site as "Jaffe Spinning Mills (linen)" and shows Blocks A and B aligned in parallel, the engine house, a chimney, and Block D on the main road. Around 1920, the enterprise appears to have passed to Messrs Mackies — James Mackie signs the company accounts from that year — and remained in Mackie hands until its closure. The name changed to the Strand Spinning Company and the mill became known as the Strand Spinning Mill. Mackies were specialists in textile machinery manufacture, based at the Albert Foundry on Springfield Road, Belfast; they may have been responsible for the wartime munitions production and subsequently diversified into textile manufacture. In 1926 the company purchased an adjacent plot to the west for £650, which included several buildings, among them the former Princess Cinema; on this plot, the sawtooth-roofed single-storey brick sheds of Block C were erected, and the complex appears in this extended form on the 1931 Ordnance Survey map, now captioned "Strand Spinning Mills (linen)". The 1938 map shows no further change to the footprint. During or shortly after the Second World War, the mill also began producing rayon and nylon filament as well as flax-tow-spun yarn. At some point an additional floor was added to the roof of Block A — it does not appear on an earlier 20th century drawing of the mill reproduced on the building's road gable — though it is uncertain without further research whether this was done when Mackies took over around 1920 or at a later date. The mill ceased production in the early 1980s and was subsequently converted into the small business units that make up Portview Trading Estate today.