Architecture Notes

Event ID 647705

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Architecture Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/647705

NT27NW 349.01 NT 23119 77071

Thought to be the earliest purpose-built car factory in Britain, the Madelvic Works produced cars from 1898 to 1900, and after 1925, was converted to become part of the United Wire Works Granton factory. Thereafter, it was devoted mostly to the production and finishing of wire cloth on broadlooms for the Scottish paper industry, but following a sharp decline in this business, production ceased in 2001 and wire cloth production was concentrated in another part of the site at a much smaller scale. The Madelvic segment of the site was subsequently sold, and the offices were to be retained as the offices of 'Edinburgh Waterfront Limited'.

The factory included a two-storeyed office block, which takes the form of a red facing-brick double-fronted house with dressed sandstone margins and a ballustrade at first floor level. A stone pediment above the main entrance depicts a chain-driven wheel representing the fifth wheel of the Madelvic battery-electric carriage. The factory itself comprised brick-built steel-framed buildings, some of which were two-storeyed, and ancillary ranges which housed other departments such as joiners' and blacksmiths' shops.

At the time of survey in 2001, much of the factory was likely to be demolished as part of the 'Edinburgh Waterfront' scheme in Granton.

Information from United Wire Works and Collins, P and Stratton, M (1993), 'British Car Factories'

Information from RCAHMS

(MKO 2003)