Description

BIDEFORD

SS4526 ROPE WALK 842-1/5/218 (South side) Blackmore's Depository

GV II

Collar factory; later furniture depository, now used as workshops, shops and keep-fit studio. Probably 1898 by RT Hookway of Bideford. Cream-brick front with dressings of red brick and a dark red stone resembling sandstone; rear wall of stone rubble. Hipped slate roof. Cream-brick chimney on centre of rear wall. Single-depth rectangular plan. 3 storeys; single-storeyed section at left-hand end. 22-window range, the single-storeyed section with in addition 5 windows flanked by a doorway to right and a cart-entrance to left. Main range designed with a strong vertical emphasis, the openings set in shallow recesses rising through all 3 storeys. Middle recess occupies a gabled projection with main entrance in ground storey and a loading door in each upper storey. The recesses have jambs and segmental arches of red brick, the arches with keystones; the windows have beneath them rectangular panels outlined in red brick. Main entrance has stone jambs and a round, cream-brick arch with keystone and flat stone archivolt, the arch enclosed within a rectangular stone frame. Double-doors, each with 6 heavily-moulded panels and an ornate iron door handle; fanlight with radial glazing-bars. On the archivolt is painted BLACKMORES' DEPOSITORY. Loading doors have jambs and segmental arches of red brick, the arches with keystones; double plank doors in upper part of opening, the lower part occupied by a 4-paned window. At the top of the third-storey loading-door a projecting iron girder with a pulley-wheel at the end. Openings within the flanking recesses (including 7 ground-storey doorways) have segmental arches of cream brick with keystones. Doorways contain plank doors with 3-paned fanlights. Windows have 3 mullioned-and-transomed lights. Simple red-brick eaves cornice composed of 2 stepped courses. On the centre of the ridge (visible from Kingsley Road) is a square cupola with ogee roof and weather-vane. At right-hand end is a single-storey lean-to masked by the bases of 2 recesses like those on the main front; it is not clear if these were part of an extension later demolished, or one that was never completed. Single-storeyed section to left is a plainer version of the main range, the window-openings with segmental cream-brick arches, linked at springing and sill-levels by red-brick bands; windows have the same 3-light, mullioned-and-transomed frames. Doorway at right-hand end is similar, but with red-brick jambs; panelled double-doors, 3-paned fanlights. Cart-entrance to left has plain lintel, probably a girder cased in cement; double plank doors. INTERIOR not inspected, but former club photographs inside main entrance showed a staircase with thin square balusters (probably of iron) and a continuous wooden handrail. Kingpost-and-ridge roof-trusses. This building is marked as a collar factory on the 25in OS map of 1904. The site was previously used for rope-making. (Bideford Weekly Gazette: 11 Jan; Oct 5: 1898-1901; Wilson's Bideford Directory: 1898-1901; Kelly's Directories: Devonshire: 1918-1923).

Listing NGR: SS4542826859

External Links

• Wikidata Q26580439

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