Station Road in Batley - Part 2

 

Nos. 13-23 Station Road

Carrying on down Station Road in Batley, Nos. 20-22 and Nos. 16-18 are further examples of warehouses/showrooms that were erected c.1870 and are described in the Station Road Conservation Area Appraisal (SACAA) as intended to parade the wealth and prestige of the wool manufacturing firms that built them to display their wares to buyers brought in by the railway.

 

Nos. 16-22 Station Road

They are designed with essentially Classical features and proportions and built with what I again presume to be the Thornhill Rock, with a combination of square headed and round headed windows, prominent keystones, pilasters and rusticated quoins, with a very different style to those further up Station Road. 

 

Nos. 12-14 Station Road

Nos. 12-14 or not listed, but it retains its loading doors and lifting beam, and Nos. 35-37 on the north side of Station Road prove further examples of quite ornate warehouses. An edited version of the Historic England (HE) description of the stonework refers to ‘dressed stone facade with deeply coursed rock-faced stone to ground floor and quoins with very heavily rock-faced voussoirs and surrounds to the ground floor windows and doors’. 

 

Rock-faced voussoirs on No. 37 Station Road.

 

Nos. 31-33, on the corner of Station Road and Warehouse Street is, built with sandstone walling with a batted finish, ashlar quoins and dressings and vermiculated masonry at basement level. The ground floor windows are round arched with 2 round arched lights and a circle above, and have a central engaged colonnette with a foliated capital. 

 

Nos. 31-33 Station Road

 

Continuing to Soothill Lane, HE describe Nos. 13-23 as formerly industrial or warehousing, with an ashlar Italian Gothic facade, and has alternating voussoirs of Thornhill Rock and red sandstone to the first floor window arches, which suggests that the architect was the same one responsible for the former Xclusive nightclub, Nos. 32-40 and Nos. 24-26. 

 

Nos. 13-23 Station Road

I didn’t cross over the road to look at it details, but HE describe the ground floor windows as having carved grotesque bats and beasts at their points of intersection and foliated capitals including acanthus, vines, thistles, roses and passion flowers to the ground floor openings. 

 

The south-west elevation of Nos. 13-23 Station Road

On the opposite side of the road is the Jessops building, which was built in 1924 as a factory by Jessops Tailors, a successful tailoring business that was originally founded c.1880 by George Jessop and his son Henry. 

 

The Jessops building

 

Although I didn’t take a photo of Nos. 2-8 Station Road, except a detail, the blue plaque on this Classical style warehouse briefly describes the history of this company and how it acquired premises in the immediately vicinity to expand the business. 

 

The blue plaque on Nos. 2-8 Station Road

 

At the triangular junction of Station Road and Bradford Road, I was very surprised to encounter a large structure, comprising three diminishing sized arches stacked up on each other, but there was no information to tell me what it was. 

 

Batley Arch

 

Looking more closely at this structure, I was interested to see that is decorated with bat motifs carved in relief, with details of ears of corn to reflect the local corn mills, and topped with a couple of bat sculptures, one of which has had its wing broken. To either side of each arch, there is a miniature building with a steep pyramidal roof in the same style as that seen at Nos. 13-23. 

 

A detail of the Batley Arch

 

I have since discovered that the Batley Arch or Bats Monument is the work of Rory McNally and Chloe Cookson and was erected in 1995 as a gateway to the Station Road Conservation Area, as part of the Batley City Challenge, and was designed to reflect the town's history. 

 

A detail of the Batley Arch