Lindsay Street Works, North Lindsay Street, Dundee

The Lindsay Street Works, built in 1874-5 by James MacLaren and George Shaw Aitken, is a three- and four-storey jute mill extended in 1881 to South Ward Road by Aitken. The complex includes an engine house within the yard. It is constructed of rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings.

The North Lindsay Street elevation is dominated by a bold, five-storey, one-by-two bay French Gothic stair tower with a bowed west elevation for a chute. It has flat, arched and round-headed windows on an encircling band course, corbelled at the third floor, and an oculus to the east. A segmental arched two-by-four-light lantern sits at the top. A pseudo-machicolated pierced parapet with angle pinnacles tops the tower, and the roof is covered in fishscale slate with wrought-iron finials. The three-bay facade of the mill has a gabled section flanked by channelled pilaster strips; the ground floor windows have been altered into doors, while the second floor features two round-headed windows and the attic has a wheel window. A one-by-two bay tower rises above the roofline at the northwest corner, incorporating oculus and a pierced parapet.

The twenty-one-bay elevation to Johnston Street is quoined between the ninth and tenth bays to visually separate the 1874 and 1881 sections. A tight connection between Johnston Street and South Ward Road features quoins, armorial details, nail-head mouldings, machicolation, and a short castellated parapet. The seven-bay elevation to South Ward Road has had three bays altered at ground floor level. A segmental arched, hood-moulded pend leads to the yard. A similar yard-facing elevation incorporates a round-headed dormer fronting an internal lift. Sash and case windows with 30 panes are used throughout, and the roof is piended slate.

The engine house, facing the entrance to the yard from North Lindsay Street, is located at the end of the 1874 mill. It features two round-headed windows separated by a band course from the doors below. One window has been blocked by a brick lift shaft, and there is an oculus in the gable. The engine house has a fine hammer beam roof, and a cast-iron beam remains in the wall above a passage for gearing to the mill.

The interior is fireproof, with two rows of cast-iron columns supporting cast-iron beams, brick arches, and wrought-iron ties, exhibiting quality detailing at the connection point. A wooden collar-beam roof, with limited headroom in the side aisles formed by short cast-iron columns, is clad in sheet-iron and lathe and plaster. The stair tower has a timber roof.