Architecture Notes

Event ID 773346

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Architecture Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/773346

NMRS REFERENCE:

Architect: R. Ewan

NS47SE 90 centred 494 706

Singer's Sewing Machine Factory: large complex up to four storeys high between Forth and Clyde Canal and the NBR [North British Railway] (Glasgow - Helensburgh via Westerton). Until recently the factory had a famous clock tower, with the largest [clock] faces in Scotland.

Visited and photographed by J R Hume, University of Strathclyde, 30 April 1966; 1974. Information from MS/749 (Dunbartonshire, Old Kilpatrick/Clydebank parishes, Singer's Sewing Machine Factory), photographic prints attached (1966) and H74/99/1, 2 contact prints of Worthington Duplex Fire Pump.

(Location cited as NS 494 707). Sewing-machine factory, built from 1882 for the Singer Manufacturing Company Limited. Though much altered in recent years, this very large complex still contains much of interest, including two late 19th century, multi-storey brick blocks, one four storey, the other six storey, both flat roofed and with concrete floors. The original single storey oil store, with brick chimney-like ventilators, still survives. There is some older machinery still in use.

J R Hume 1976.

This complex of buildings has been demolished.

Information from RCAHMS (MMD), 23 March 1998.

Factory block (1904-5) 800ft long, 80feet wide, six floors, 90ft high constituting 'a record in building construction, so far as concerns the dimensions of the structure, the rapidity of erection, and the extent to which ferrolithic has been used'. Erected by Messrs. Robert McAlpine and Sons to designs by Robert Whyte, architect.

Information from J Clarke (English Heritage), 3 March 2003.