Sites and Monument Record: Carron Co Office Block (SMR 101)

Description
A large office block in Scottish Baronial style fronting Carron Road - it was demolished 1990.
As part of the wholesale re-organisation of the ironworks a new office block was constructed along the north side of Carron Road to act as an imposing facade for the works and to screen the industrial buildings behind. The two-storey building was 53 bays long, measuring c190m by 13m.The overall design was a weak Scottish Baronial of the Stirling School with five slightly advanced crowstepped gablets, a central pyramid spired tower and rock-faced snecked sandstone rubble used on the front face. The tower hung over a segmental pend arch. It was designed by Robert Baldie of Glasgow, 1874-1876.
The 2 storey facade, with attic, had a slated roof with continuous roof-lights and piended ends. It was imposing by its sheer mass and had a greater degree of ornamentation in the centre. The central 19 bays possessed moulded string courses, plain parapets and 5 slightly advanced crowstepped gables. The central gable rose to form a tower - starting with a tall deep roll-moulded segmental pend arch, with a triple window on the first floor, then armorial and date panels surmounted by a square clock turret with black and gold faces and capped by a bell-cast pyramidal roof. To either side of the pend are insets containing items from the long and glorious history of the Carron Company. An iron lintel from the first blast furnace on the site, dated 1760, on the right. On the opposite side is part of a cylinder cast in 1766 for James Watt, the steam engine designer. The armorial panel above contains the company´s crest with its crossed cannons and phoenix rising from the flames with the company motto above, `Esto Perpetua´ (Let it Endure Forever). The datestone has 1876 in monogram. It is clasped by the slight corbelling of the clock tower. The inset square panels of which have moulded circular roundels containing the clock faces. This stage has a dentilled cornice and canon-mouldings at each corner and is surmounted by a weathervane.
Smaller gables at 18th, 23rd, 31st and 36th bays had segmentally arched moulded doorways to 23rd and 31st bipartites to 18th and 36th all with hood moulds and label stops, bipartites at 1st and asymmetrically placed chimney shafts. Intermediate bays had bipartite ground floor windows and single light windows at 1st floor, all moulded; the outer 17 bays each side had simpler single light windows at both levels with anchor plates between the ground floor ones.
The back of the building was finished in brick and supported fire escapes. After demolition, in 1990, stub walls were left as buttresses to the central tower and the side walls were cement rendered. In 1992 single storey additions were provided to flank it in the form of guardrooms. These are of yellow concrete blocks with low-arched lead roofs. They are tied to the tower by low wing walls, of the same blocks, with narrow gaps filled with iron grills. The southern room has a corner window; the northern a window in its east gable.