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| A carved keystone depicting a ram at No. 21 Bond Street |
Continuing my investigation of the Listed Buildings in Dewsbury, I continued to the top of Grove Street, where I was surprised to see the array of later C19 warehouses on Bond Street, many of which have been designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style.
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| A view down Bond Street |
At the end of the 18th century Dewsbury’s population was only around 1,000, but it had grown to more than 14,000 by 1851, due to the extremely rapid growth of its textile industry. The town was an early proponent of mass recycling, specialising in the production of two types of yarn that were made from rags – which were known as shoddy and mungo.
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| A view up Bond Street |
The warehouses and brokers offices on Bond Street and other larger ones on Wellington Road, in Character Area 5A: Western, as defined by the Dewsbury Conservation Area Appraisal, were clustered around the Dewsbury Wellington Road railway station on the London and North Western Railway, which opened in 1848 and had sidings and large good sheds to serve them.
Opposite Grove Street is No. 24 Bond Street (c.1880), a four storey warehouse and offices and next to this is No. 22 (1868), by William Thornton for the wool-stapler Matthew Grandidge – a dealer who buys, sorts, grades and resells wool. No. 20 (1862) is another warehouse for Matthew Grandidge, this time by Charles Henry Marriott and No. 18 (1871), by John Kirk & Sons, was built for Crawshaw & Sons, who sold leather goods and produced drive belts for machinery.
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| Nos. 18-24 Bond Street |
I didn’t look closely at any of the sandstone but, as with the stonework at Nos. 2 and 4 Grove Street, it is uniformly light brown in colour and there appears to be no difference between the stone used for the rock-faced walling and the dressings. These contrast with the buff/yellowish sandstone ashlar seen in Barclay’s and HSBC banks, The Arcade and Dewsbury Town Hall.
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| Quarries marked on the 1855 Ordnance Survey Survey map |
The arrival of the railways by 1850 had enabled to architects to specify the best building stones from Huddersfield, Bradford and Halifax for such prestigious buildings, but I suspect that the sandstone to build these warehouses was quarried from the Thornhill Rock; however, the 1855 Ordnance Survey map shows several quarries nearby on the Birstall Rock.
The 1930 geological memoir states that the Birstall Rock is extremely variable in character and contains many ironstone balls, which spoils the appearance of the rock and makes it difficult to work. Although this description wouldn’t be considered applicable to the buildings on Bond Street, the tower and north aisle at Dewsbury Minster does contain such clay ironstone nodules.
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| No. 26 Bond Street |
Retracing my steps up Bond Street, No. 26, an office which is included in the Grade II Listing for 9-13 Wellington Road East, is dated by Historic England at c.1800, but it doesn’t actually appear on the 1855 Ordnance Survey map. On the opposite side of Bond Street is No. 21, which Historic England describes as “Commercial building, in modified Italian style. Late C19”.
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| No. 21 Bond Street |
The Historic England listing, unsurprisingly, barely mentions the fine carved heads to the keystones, but a comment on the official listing states that this building was designed by Charles Henry Marriott in 1862, for woollen manufacturer John Greenwood, and that the carving might have been by the monumental mason and architectural carver, John Schofield.
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| carved heads on the keystones of No. 26 Bond Street |
As I had already seen on the Barclay’s and HSBC banks, the great importance of the woollen textile industry of Dewsbury is recognised by a ram being carved on to one of the keystones, which here looks like it is being weighed.
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| A carved keystone depicting a ram |
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| No. 23 Bond Street |
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