Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017660
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017660
This late example is included to represent the countless smaller foundries once active in virtually every town and city in Scotland for serving the engineering trade, not withstanding Glasgow's pre-eminence. Built in 1895, it was an extension of the Northern Implement Foundry Company, which was established in March 1872, with a labour force of twenty, to manufacture agricultural implements. The firm then rapidly expanded under the name of the Rose Street Engineering Foundry Company to meet the demands of the Highland Railway for rail- and locomotive-castings and for bridges. Subsequently, during the two World Wars, it became famous alike for the production of marine engines and boom-defence equipment, and for its specialised welding-techniques. Planned on an irregular site averaging 190 ft (58m) by 95 ft (29m) in area and covered with timber roofs, it consists of a 30 ft-wide (9.14m) central machine-hall equipped with gantry, and a gallery of similar width enclosing it on three sides with the upper storey supported at mid-span by a row of circular cast-iron columns. According to the design drawings, endorsed by Inverness architects Ross and MacBeth and dated 1894, the three-arched and gabled stone frontage, as built, was modified to contain a semicircular window in each of the gables. Internally, the main point of structural interest is the rejection of the conventional monolithic stanchion in favour of a U-section casting, built up in two stages-although with the modest overall height of 21 ft (6.40m). They are bolted together at the head of the stouter 8 ft-high (2.44m) lower section by means of an intervening sleeve-casting through which runs a rolled steel stiffening beam.
Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’, (1986).
