11491

 

II*  

Designated  

22/08/1975  

12/11/2002  

Dowlais Works Blast Engine House  

 

Merthyr Tydfil  

Dowlais  

Merthyr Tydfil  

Dowlais  

306909  

207739  

 

Situated on the SE side of the High Street some 150m SW of the former Guest Memorial Library.  

Industrial  

 

Blowing engine house of 1905-7 built for Guest, Keen & Nettlefold to provide blast for the new blast furnace plant at the Dowlais Works completed in 1909. The building is 54m long and 15m high and had 3 blowing engines of vertical compound condensing quarter crank type with Corliss Gear for steam and Southwark Valve Gear for air. Iron and steel making stopped in Dowlais in 1930 and the bulk of the Dowlais Works closed in 1936. The building was used for offices and storage in the late C20 by the OP Chocolate Factory and at the time of survey was unused.  

Very large industrial building in red brick with yellow dressings and hipped roof behind parapet. Apparently of 2-storeys, a high lower floor and attic but actually a single space within. Nine-bay side walls, 3-bay end walls, the bays divided by piers with yellow brick quoins. Rubble stone plinth, double yellow-brick string course under upper windows and similar triple course under parapet. Lower openings are long, arch-headed with yellow brick rusticated surrounds and arches with stone impost and key blocks. Third-length windows in bays 1, 2 and 9, quarter-length window in bay 5, with lintel below at mid height over recessed walling with yellow-brick arch and fanlight over narrower C20 door (early photographs show a tall arch under the window here). Bay 9 has yellow-brick arched doorway, infilled with C20 small door. Upper level has similar but short windows. Original metal glazing survives at this level with small panes and radiating bars. Rear NW side has the same upper windows but blank long yellow-brick arched panels to each lower bay with 2 yellow-brick blank roundels over each panel, all with stone key and impost blocks. Centre bay has roundels over cast-iron portico with 2 columns each side, corniced flat top similar double-column responds. Two further shorter columns stand on flat roof. Cambered-headed yellow-brick doorway within. The bays each side of centre have only one roundel over the panel and that asymmetrically set, but in mirror image. End elevations are similar to main front at NW, and plain at SE with just blank yellow-brick framed panels to upper level and 2 oddly random roundel windows below.  

Not inspected.  

Listed II* as one of the now rare blast engine houses in Wales and as an industrial building of very large scale, architecturally-treated.