Clothing the world
My first acquaintance with Market Harborough was when I was a teenager, during a long and exhausting bus journey across the country. There had been a series of traffic hold-ups, driver changes, and diversions, and as far as I can remember the route was not scheduled to include the quiet rural roads of Rutland and this part of Leicestershire at all. By the time the bus reached Market Harborough, it too was quiet. The shops had closed and most of the workers had gone home. But it was time for the bus to make a surprise stop, with ten minutes for a what was then euphemistically described as the opportunity to ‘stretch our legs’. There was just time to find a gents and notice the parish church with its tall spire (dedicated to St Dionysius – I wouldn’t forget that in a hurry), the timber-framed old grammar school, and a vast Victorian red-brick factory, then rather down at heel but still apparently in use, right in the middle of the town.* I had no idea that the factory’s products were almost as outdated as the architecture: this was the corset factory of Symington and Company, who once had the ambition to provide supportive undergarments for every woman in the world.
Yesterday I was passing through the town quite early in the morning and thought it might be quiet enough to take a photograph of the factory without too much traffic around it. There wasn’t the total lack of parked vehicles I’d hoped for, but the towering brick walls dwarfed the large white van that had pulled in on the pavement and the nearby trees, still without their leaves on this February morning, allowed one to make out the architecture. Rows of tall windows make for what must be a very light interior – necessary for the sewing that went on within, using ranks of Singer sewing machines. Symington’s were one of the first companies to modernise their production process by using these machines. The millions of garments they made bore the labels of retailers, such as Marks and Spencer’s, so the company was not famous outside its field. But the formula worked, and Symington’s went on to open factories in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. When fashions changed, and women and girls sought alternatives to the restrictive corset, they invented the liberty bodice, as well as continuing to make corsets and what Symington’s, with good old-fashioned Francophilia, called brassières (grave accent and all).
At first glance the factory’s architecture is a bit like an overgrown Victorian board school, but it’s enormous, and set off with a succession of tall gables, each with a distinctive semicircular window. There’s another such window in the Italianate end tower, too, which is topped with a tapering roof and small cupola – as if the factory were not already a noticeable landmark, visible above the surrounding shops and grammar school. The size of the building speaks of the company’s success – they’d commissioned the factory in 1889 when their previous premises, an old carpet works to the southeast, proved too small. Local architects, Everard and Pick, did the design, and they were still around to extend the building in 1894 and 1926. When the factory finally closed in 1980 and it was converted for use by the local council, the successor practice, Pick, Everard, Keay & Gimson, were the architects. In more ways than one, it seems, the Symington’s factory has long been at heart of life in Harborough.
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* A major part of the impact of this building comes from its town centre site, where it dwarfs the surrounding buildings. It is comparable in this respect with the enormous Wadworth brewery in Devizes, about which I posted
here.
Update 5 March 2019 A reader has provided an excellent extended comment, containing much information on the factory and company. You can read this buy pressing the word COMMENTS just below.
