SANDFIELD ROAD Architectural Description (continued)

Nos 18 - 27: Row of 10 'byelaw' cottages (with back alleys for water carried drainage), built in one operation - see 2-course band of pale headers swept up between 22 & 23, a polychromatic feature; built c.1867 by Dutton & Gore, builders. Bricks are much pinker than in earlier houses and not clamp burnt; slate roofs, 'ogee' gutters on fascia boards; 19 & 24 retain glazing bars; note -moulding on front stone steps.

Nos 31 - 38: Row of 'byelaw' cottages built 1906 by Messrs Rimmer, builders; machine made 'common' bricks with red pressed (Ruabon?) brick dressings to openings & to support gutter; 4 retain windows? but no original front doors.

(Former) Electricity Generating Station of the Liverpool District Lighting Co. Ltd, dated 1898, architects F. & G. Holme, 1 Crosshall Street. Highly specialised building type; in the centre a high Engine House for generators, with glass roof and louvred ventilation along the ridge; to left & set back, the Boiler House with similar roof & ventilation; to right Transformer & Distribution House with Switchroom behind; in front the Office Block. On the left was an open yard, the chimney site not yet located. Built in selected 'common' bricks with red pressed bricks to openings, moulded 'specials' for all arches - many of them elliptical with each brick a different shape - terra-cotta dentil course on the Office Block. Most stone dressings are buff York stone. Where heavy machinery or wagons enter, the openings further protected with Blue Staffordshire bullnosed engineering bricks still unblemished. 10 ft door to Boiler House has ample clearance for coal wagons below a lintel fabricated of 2 steel channels bolted back-to-back with welded web-stiffeners, above is a cast iron glazed fanlight, note York stone setts (grip for horses), granite kerbs and crossing. 8 ft. door to Engine House, for moving heavy generators in and out has cast iron step, cast iron lintel and cast iron glazed fanlight, and retains oak glazed doors. By comparison the Office Door is domestic in scale; and the Office window has Woolton Stone mullion and transom with, over it, a tympanum of moulded cast stone carrying the date "AD 1898"; the 6 ft door to the right has cat iron step & lintel, the tympanum "L D L Co Lmtd", panelled unglazed oak door. (Inside the Engine House is lined with white glazed bricks)

This is a high quality building, designed by an architect -who understood what was required, both for the new techniques of generating electricity, and for resistance to wear and tear. (Note - 4inch cast iron rainwater pipes set well clear of the wall so that a paint brush can get behind them).

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