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Tyne and Wear HER(7604): Pelaw, Shields Road, factory of Robert Howarth Ltd - Details

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7604


Gateshead


Pelaw, Shields Road, factory of Robert Howarth Ltd


Pelaw


NZ26SE


Industrial


Factory


Furniture Factory


Modern


C20


Extant Building


This was a CWS cabinet works, later a shirt factory. Inside there was a World War One Roll of Honour in an oak frame {North East War Memorials Project www.newmp.org.uk, P24.02}. The Roll of Honour has been passed to Bill Lumsden of North East War Memorials Project and will be displayed in St. Mary's Church Hall at Heworth. The factory was built in the 1920s. It is built in symmetrical bays with red-brick pilasters in Flemish bond and bays in-between in red-brick English garden wall bond. Two ashlar courses run around the building. The windows sit between them. The building has a sawtooth roof. The short slope is glazed and the long slope covered with Welsh slate shingles and slate ridgecaps. The frontage of the building facing onto Shields Road is bounded by a low red-brick wall in English garden wall bond with ashlar coping stones. The wall has square red-brick gateposts in English cross bond with ashlar copings and ball finials. The north elevation is made up of eleven bays between twelve pilasters. The central bay is the main factory entrance with double doors under a triangular gable roof. The ten remaining bays each have a wooden framed hopper window which opens inwards, glazed with reinforced plastic 'Plexiglas'. The windows have projecting ashlar sills. To the immediate west of the factory entrance is the office entrance with narrow wooden panelled double doors, with the upper panels glazed, which open outwards. Above the door is a glazed panel transom light. At the south-corner of the building is a large brick chimney with two attached tubular steel chimneys. The south elevation consists of four two-storey bays on either side of a central bay with gable roof. A painted sign reads 'CO-OPERATIVE WHOLESALE SOCIETY SHIRT FACTORY' which would have been visible from the adjacent Brandling Junction Railway line. Inside there is an open-plan factory floor, storage area, workshops, offices and meeting rooms, WCs, a kitchen and canteen. The interior doors appear to be original. The roof has vertical steel I-bar pillars supporting large horizontal steel joists. A linen press marked with the CWS logo stands in the storage area. A basement level is accessed by a wooden quarter-turn staircase just off the factory entrance. The basement is open-plan. There are two outbuildings to the east of the shirt factory. The Co-operative Wholesale Society had a number of factories at Pelaw. The first one to be opened was the Drug and Drysaltery Department, where pickled onions and other pickled gooded were prepared and bottled. Gateshead Library has photographs of this factory in 1901 (GL000680 and GL000676). The Tailoring Department made shirts, nightwear, coats, suits, industrial clothing (overalls, boilersuits and pit clothes) and quilts from 1914 (GL000673, GL002452, GL000681). ARCHITECT L G Ekins (CWS, West Blandford St, Newcastle) DATES Plans 1915, erected c1920 LOCAL LIST


2901


6208


NZ29016208



Gateshead Council Local List X20/LL/236; North East War Memorials Project www.newmp.org.uk, P24.02; Jamie Scott and Jocelyn Strickland, Tyne and Wear Museums, June 2008, Pelaw Shirt Factory, Shields Road, Pelaw, Gateshead - Archaeological Desk-based Assessment and Historic Buildings Recording; TWAS T353/Plan/; TWM Archaeology, 2010, Pelaw Shirt Factory, Archaeological Evaluation

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