Weaving Sheds, Barrowfield Weaving Factory, 49-51 Norman Street, Glasgow

The Barrowfield Weaving Factory, located at 111 French Street in Glasgow, is a large red brick warehouse complex built between 1889 and 1899 for John Brown & Son. The main elevation facing French Street features a three-storey, seven-bay central section with a pediment, flanked by a two-storey, eleven-bay range to the east and a tall two-storey, six-bay polychrome range to the west, which was altered at the roof.

The central range has a projecting cill band at the second floor and a cornice with mutules at the eaves. It includes segmental-arched openings, with bays separated by pilaster-like features that create shallow panels on the ground and first floors, and blind arcaded panels on the second floor. There are oriel windows with raked cills and deep-set openings. The east range mirrors the upper floor details of the central range, featuring segmental-arched openings and contrasting rounded glazed brick cills and brick voussoirs. The west range is decorated with polychrome banding and has red ashlar dressings, a pointed arch doorway, square-headed openings, an oriel window, raked cills, and brick mullions.

The factory has a largely regular arrangement of windows throughout, with principal elevations facing south towards French Street. The outer left bay of the central range includes a door with flanking narrow lights beneath a fanlight, and a tall square-headed roller door on the outer right. The second floor features ogee-capped bartizans flanking the central pediment, and there is a glazed oculus on each return gable. The east range has two square-headed roller doors and a pedimented roofline on the left, with a gable that includes a glazed oculus on the left return facing Dora Street. The west range has two deep-set doors, one in a pointed-arch opening with a wallhead stack above, bipartite and tripartite windows, and a canted oriel window on the first floor right. Decorative polychrome detailing is present between the floors and divides the first-floor bays, and the roof is piended.

At the rear, there is a long series of single-storey north-lit weaving sheds. The windows throughout the building feature largely multi-pane and plate glass glazing patterns in fixed and timber sash and case styles. The east range has some grey slate with horizontal cast iron rooflights and pyramidal ridge ventilators, while the roofs elsewhere are covered with metal sheeting.