Tower Works is a former factory notable for its three listed towers. It is located on Globe Road in

Holbeck Holbeck is an inner city area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It begins on the southern edge of Leeds city centre and mainly lies in the LS11 postcode district. The M1 and M621 motorways used to end/begin in Holbeck. Now the M621 is the ...

Leeds Leeds () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the thi ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exis ...

, next to the

Leeds and Liverpool Canal The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a canal in Northern England, linking the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. Over a distance of , crossing the Pennines, and including 91 locks on the main line. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal has several small branc ...

. The

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italia ...

towers of the factory are a distinctive landmark on the

skyline. The factory was founded by T.R. Harding to make steel pins for

carding Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered wit ...

and combing in the

textile industry The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. Industry process Cotton manufac ...

, and the original buildings, by Thomas Shaw, were erected in 1864–66. Harding's son, Colonel

Thomas Walter Harding Colonel Thomas Walter Harding (22 January 1843 – 26 March 1927) was a British industrialist and civic figure in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Life Harding was born in Lille, France, where his Leeds-based father Thomas Richards Harding (18 ...

, employed William Bakewell to extend the works in 1899. The design of the extension was heavily influenced by Harding's love of Italian architecture and art. The most notable features of Tower Works are the three towers that give it its name and served for dust extraction from the factory. The largest and most ornate tower (1899, by Bakewell) is based on

Giotto's Campanile Giotto's Campanile (, also , ) is a free-standing campanile that is part of the complex of buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Standing adjacent to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore and the ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

. The smaller ornate tower (1866, by Shaw) is styled after the Torre dei Lamberti in

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

. A third plain tower, built as part of Harding's final phase of expansion in 1919, is thought to represent a Tuscan tower house such as can be seen in

San Gimignano San Gimignano () is a small walled medieval hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, north-central Italy. Known as the Town of Fine Towers, San Gimignano is famous for its medieval architecture, unique in the preservation of about a dozen o ...

. All three towers are listed structures, the two ornate towers being Grade II* and the plain tower Grade II. The design for the Giotto Tower included ventilation systems that were way ahead of their time in terms of minimising

pollution Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...

from the steel works. The chimney incorporated a filter to remove the excess steel dust. In 1895 T. W. Harding & Son amalgamated with two other companies to become Harding, Rhodes & Co. The factory sustained damage in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

when neighbouring buildings were bombed during the air raids on the nearby

Leeds railway station Leeds railway station (also known as Leeds City railway station) is the mainline railway station serving the city centre of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. It is the fourth-busiest railway station in the UK outside London (as of March 2020). ...

. It closed in 1981 after 117 years of operating on the site.

Present

Tower Works lies at the heart of the Holbeck Urban Village renovation area, it was acquired by Yorkshire Forward in 2005. A masterplan for the site was drawn up by Yorkshire Forward, ISIS Waterside Regeneration and Bauman Lyons Architects for an exemplar sustainable mixed use development. The development agreement between Yorkshire Forward and ISIS fell through and Yorkshire Forward developed the first phase. With the winding up of the regional development agencies, ownership passed to the Homes and Communities Agency who oversaw the completion of the entrance range to provide accommodation for digital and creative companies. In 2014 a new developer was sought to develop the rest of the site.

References

{{reflist Towers completed in 1866 Buildings and structures in Leeds Listed buildings in Leeds Grade II listed buildings in Leeds Grade II* listed buildings in West Yorkshire Bell towers in the United Kingdom 1866 establishments in England