Listed Buildings on Hick Lane in Batley

 

The tympanum on the Union Rooms public house

Leaving Station Road and crossing over Bradford Road, I started my walk to the modern centre of Batley and stopped to take a couple of photos of the former warehouse and shop premises (c.1870), which is now occupied by the Batley Barless Fire Company. 

 

The building occupied by the Batley Barless Fire Company

Set on the corner of Bradford Road and Hick Lane, with a triangular plan and a curving corner bay is, it is designed in a Classical style and is built in Thornhill Rock ashlar but I only took photos of each elevation, from which I could see the Cheapside Mills and Hick Lane Mills, before continuing along Hick Lane. 

 

The building occupied by the Batley Barless Fire Company

 

On the opposite side of the road is the former mid to late C19 Midland Bank, which had last been used as The Bank public house but was to let at the time of my visit. It is built with sandstone ashlar, but the front elevation has very bold dressings and architectural features. 

 

The former Midland Bank

 

The ground floor, large quoins and voussoirs to the windows are rusticated, the cornice and moulded string course are bracketted and the porch has scrolled brackets with large festooned consoles that support a full entablature with a balcony. 

 

Keystones on the former Midland Bank

 

The most interesting features are the large keystones with well carved figure heads, which remind me of the very many keystones that I have seen in Dewsbury and also in Ossett. I have not yet come across any Historic England (HE) listing description that refers to the sculptor, although Leeds based sculptors such as John Wormald Appleyard and Mawer and Ingle could easily have made use of the Great Northern Railway to transport their work to Batley. 

 

The Methodist Sunday School

 

Continuing along Hick Lane, my next stop was the Methodist Sunday School, which HE yet again very loosely describes as having a date of c.1870. The main elevation is north facing and with it being in the shade I couldn’t really make these out from a distance, but the upper windows have pilaster surrounds with Corinthian capitals. 

 

The pediment of the Wesleyan Methodist Church

Next door to this is the former Wesleyan Methodist Church (c.1861), which the Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland attributes to the architect J. Simpson and closed in 1956. The architectural features, especially the windows, are very similar to the Sunday School and it is therefore likely that he also designed this. 

 

 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church

A little further along Hick Lane is the Union Rooms public house owned by JD Wetherspoon, which typically occupy listed buildings, and is described by HE as the Barclays Bank Building but which was originally built for the West Riding Union Bank in 1877. 

 

The Union Rooms public house

 

I presume that the sandstone used here is also Thornhill Rock and the intricate carving and raised lettering on the porch have retained their sharp profiles, which is also a feature of the architectural sculpture that I had seen on the warehouses on Station Road.

 

The porch of the Union Rooms public house

 

The tympanum is described by HE as having a round carved plate with 3 shields, with the centre one bearing the Huddersfield coat of arms. I didn’t take the time to look at the fine details, but my photograph of one of the foliated capitals shows ears of wheat and wood mice.

A capital on the porch of the Union Rooms public house