British Engine Boiler and Electrical Insurance Company Headquarters

Within the last few weeks Manchester has acquired a new and imposing street corner. It is formed by the big semi-circular building of the British Engine, Boiler, and Electrical Insurance Company at the junction of Fennel Street and Long Millgate. The building is circular for the greater part of frontage, with a radius of about 45 feet. It is erected on the site of some old property which was bought a few years ago by the Manchester Corporation and pulled down to widen the street. The architects are Messrs. J. W. Beaumont & Sons. of St. James's Square.

Architecturally the most interesting thing about the frontage is that it is neither brick nor stone, but that kind of tiling with a dull surface known as Carrara ware. This building material is much more common in London than in Manchester. The Savoy Hotel. to mention only one example. is faced with it. It has the great advantage of being washable, and after a wash it comes out as bright and clean as if it had just been built. As the British Engine, Boiler, and Electrical building is going to be washed every six months. it will always be a bright contrast to the smoke-dyed buildings around it and a cheery defiance to Manchester's gloom and grime. For the face and structure of the building the architects are responsible, but the whole of the internal equipment has been designed by the Insurance Company itself. The heating and ventilation. the lifts, the fittings, furniture, and lighting have all been designed by the Company's Engineers and executed to their specifications. This fact makes a tour of the building exceedingly interesting. because it gives one an opportunity of studying exactly how an up-to-date business firm thinks an office ought to be equipped and with what kind of taste they carry out their ideas.

Inside the building, as outside, the first thing that strikes one is the love of light and brightness. The light oak panelling in the more important rooms, and the light oak desks in all the rooms, help largely in producing this effect. But there is a great deal of actual light. and of the right kind of light. The long semi-circular range of windows round the frontage of the building means exceptionally good lighting on every floor inside the building. Besides that, there are additional back windows which command a good lump of sky. At night every room will be illuminated by the most perfect system optically that has yet been discovered—that of indirect lighting. No direct ray of light from any of the lamps falls on any man's eyes or desk. The lamps are concealed b handsome brass or copper bowls hung from the ceiling by chains, and the lighting thrown up on to the white ceiling and thence reflected in a soft diffused flood. Each fitting in the general offices holds a 200-watt metal filament lamp.

The building is a six-storey structure, of which the Insurance Company occupies four floors. The ground floor is let for shops, the first floor for offices. All the remaining floors are occupied by the Company. On the lowest of these four floors are the Secretarial and Lift Departments. Above that, on the third floor, are the Engine and Electrical Departments. on the fourth floor the Boiler Department. and on the fifth floor the Special Services Department, the typing rooms, tracing rooms, and telephone exchange. In a sort of studio on the roof is the laboratory—an important addition to the equipment of the firm. There. too, is the caretaker's flat, with a roof terrace. commanding a very extensive and exceedingly depressing view of Manchester.

To begin with the Secretarial Department on the lowest of these floors, the general appearance of the room is semi-circular, but at one end are the Boardroom and the Secretary's room. Both are handsome rooms. beautifully panelled in light oak. The public office of the Secretarial Department is perhaps the most interesting in the building. The many light oak desks, though they are more or less uniform in appearance, are as a matter of fact each one separately designed for the individual needs of the particular man who uses it. For example, if a man's work involves any typing, one end of his desk, though it is apparently uniform with the others, conceals a disappearing typewriter table. Each desk is fitted with stationery cabinets, and cupboards, drawers, and shelves of varying size, according to the materials that have to be stored there. A neat little device in many of the desks is a shelf fitted with rollers across the middle and at the edge so that a big heavy ledger can be drawn in and out without labour and without fraying or tearing it.

On the floor above are the Engine and Electrical Departments. a very similar room. similarly fitted out. The corresponding room above is devoted to another technical department. the Boiler Department. This is another room of similar shape and equipment, except that instead of the Boardroom and Secretary's room there are half-a-dozen small rooms for the reporting engineers. The fifth floor houses the Special Services Department, which might be described as a department of consulting engineers, for there are both electrical and steam experts entirely engaged on advisory work. When the owner of a mill or a works is going in for new plant or a big change of mechanical equipment it is usual for him to apply to the Insurance Company for expert advice. This is, of course, a by-product of engineering insurance. but it is a very important by-product in itself, apart from the fact that it acts as a feeder to the main business. On the same floor is a large. light typists' room with the inevitable dictaphones; the telephone switchboard room, which handles five lines and thirty-five extensions. and an office, where a staff of girls is engaged calculating indicator diagrams. In some ways the two most interesting floors are the roof and the basement, for on the roof is the chemical laboratory and in the basement is the strong-room.

The Laboratory has been fitted up on modern lines and equipped to meet the necessities of a varying class of clients. In addition to the general apparatus required for the chemical and physical examination of oils, coal, water, etc. the equipment includes mechanical oil-testing machine, combustion furnaces. and photo-micrographic apparatus for the examination of the structure of metals. In the basement are the strong-room. the stationery stores, and the electric vacuum cleaner plant, with which the whole office can be scientifically cleaned every night. Below the basement is the sub-basement containing the boilers and the ventilating and heating plant. The system of ventilation is of the most elaborate modern type. The air is drawn from the top of the building down a shaft to the sub-basement. It is first passed through a pumice stone screen, which is continually washed with water. This is to take the Manchester soot out of it, and leave it clean and pure. It is next passed over a heating or a cooling battery, according to the weather, and then circulated through the building by means of a fan. It is carried up to the various floors by two vertical ducts, from which are carried horizontal branches to the main offices and private rooms. Heating is by the modern system of hot-water radiators, which never reach a temperature high enough to scorch floating dust and cause the unpleasant smell which one often gets from overheated steam pipes. There is also a "domestic" hot-water supply all through the building for the convenience of the occupants.

Two interesting points of up-to-date equipment remain to be mentioned. There is only one sort of time in the building and that is Greenwich time. Every clock is synchronised and is electrically controlled every half-minute by a master clock. Secondly, the protection of the building from lightning has been very thoroughly done. There are two complete belts of lightning conductors right round the building. The lift equipment of the building is very elaborate. It includes a large electric passenger lift for public use and another automatic press-button lift for staff use. Each is worked by a 15-h.p. motor. In addition, there are an hydraulic ash hoist and the book and letter lifts.

HISTORY OF THE COMPANY - The removal into this big new building is, of course, the outward mark of the vast expansion of the British Engine, Boiler, and Electrical Insurance Company, which might almost be described as an offshoot of the original Association for the Prevention of Steam Boiler Explosions, founded in Manchester in 1855. Mr. R. B. Longridge, who was the first Chief Inspector of that Association, afterwards became the Chief Engineer of the first boiler insurance company, started in 1859 under the name of the Steam Boiler Assurance Company. In 1878 he resigned that appointment to start the Engine and Boiler Insurance Company, with the object of insuring engines against break-down, ae well as boilers against explosion. The latter Company has developed into the one whose offices are here described, and with Mr. R. B. Longridge as Chairman, and his nephew Mr. Michael Longridge as Chief Engineer, its operations have been extended to include the inspection, with or without insurance, of steam, gas, or oil engines, steam turbines, boilers, keirs, or vessels of any description subjected to pressure. electrical dynamos, motors, etc., and lifts, cranes, and hoists — practically every description of power plants.

Reference    Modern Building Record Vol 5 1914 page 86-87
Reference    Manchester Guardian 26 June 1914 page 12 with illustrations

Also known as Cathedral Chambers