Reedham House and
Neighbours - King Street West This block, on the
corner of St. Mary's Parsonage and King Street West, is
made up of three buildings, two of which date back to at
least the mid 1800s. The rather classical looking
building, with the columns and pediment, on the corner
of King Street West and Smithy Lane, is Reedham
House. Beside it, with a branch of Entwistle's at
street level, is a three storey building that is
probably the most modern structure in the block.
Behind both of these, and rising above them, is a 19th
Century factory building occupied in part by Kuits
Solicitors. Judging by the sign on the windows
Kuits also occupy the floor about Entwistle's.
Below is my version of a plan of the site. Kuits occupy a building
across Garden Lane on St. Mary's Parsonage which is
connected to the old factory building by a glass bridge.
You can see the entrance to the old factory building on Smithy Lane (below). If you look down Dunlop
Street (see below) you can see the back of the old
factory and the interesting windows on the stairwell.
As you can see from my
version of a map from the 1880s (below), Reedham House
was a "Machinery & Leather Warehouse". The old
factory had two occupants, P. Haworth's Leather Factory
and Binyons, Robinson & Co's tea and coffee
warehouse. The site of today's "Entwistle"
building was occupied by an odd combination of Brass
Works and Undertaker. The near neighbour was the
Albert Street Police Sation and between the two a narrow
building housing a veterinary surgeon and shoeing forge.
The configuration and naming of streets has changed since the 1880s. Albert Street is gone and Alberton House now sits in the vicinity of the police station buildings and Albert Street. Albert Street became St. Mary's Parsonage and it now runs along the former Garden Lane and through what was the vets and the back wall of the police station yard. Greek Street is now Dunlop Street and Garden Lane now runs along the back of the old factory building between the Calico Warehouse and Haworth's Leather Factory. The arrow on the aerial
photograph below points to Reedham House on the corner
of Smithy Lane.
I suspect that the low
brick wall behind the parked motorbikes, in the image
below, is the wall that separated Haworth's Factory from
the Veterinary Surgeon's building. The green arrow
on the image above points to that location.
Below you can see the
site in the middle of the 1800s. It shows that the
old factory started out as a coach manufactury and it is
possible that Reedham House was part of it. The
map also shows that Albert Street Police Station was
built on, or occupied, the buildings of the former Gas
Works, the first to supply gas to the city centre.
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