Industrial building ground coverings

[Graeme Leary]

About to complete the industrial area on my layout (brewery, mills, factories etc) and unsure of how the outside ground areas would have been finished in a typical (say) Yorkshire industrial town in the 1920s/40s ie during the Grouping period. Would tarmac have made an appearance by then in an around 'newish' brick buildings or would there have been obviously unsealed areas and still some cobblestones in places? Any photos I have aren't too clear in a general sense as usually long distance views. Many thanks for any help.
Graeme Leary

[teaky]

You won't go far wrong with stone setts. Still around today. A large proportion of the industrial buildings were built in the Victorian era and it takes a long time for stone setts to wear out especially if maintained.

For very visible areas the best effects I've seen have been done either with embossed plastic or card or with scribed DAS or plaster. For areas subject to less scrutiny you may be able to find a suitable embossed wallpaper though this is more likely to work for cobbles rather than setts.

Perhaps your friend in Yorkshire might be able to get hold of one or more of those photographic archives of an example local area? The kind of books that local history societies put together.

[Graeme Leary]

Many thanks Teaky - on to the case right now and will see what my local library has to offer as a guide. (Have to say was hoping tarmac may have been in use then as a lot easier to portray than stone cobbles - which I presume are the same as stone setts).
Graeme

[Graeme Leary]

Oops, apologies Teaky. Should have checked first but a quick 'google' has just shown me the difference between 'setts' and 'cobbles'. Have walked over them many a time and always thought they were 'cobblestones'.
Graeme

[Hatfield Shed]

Cobbles or Cobblestones, usage probably varies around the country for the same thing. In addition to stone setts, brick paving where hard stone quarried at a distance was more expensive than a local brickworks product. Hardwood block paving was also used, kinder to such as glass and ceramic products being wheeled about in bulk on unsprung vehicles.

Then again I was not long past in Taylor's bell foundry, Loughborough (not far from the ex-GCR station) and their casting hall was deliberately 'floored' in the loose casting sand from used moulds. Good compliant surface should a bell cast be dropped, less chance of damage. (A truly interesting place with the whole process to see, tours available.)

[PGBerrie]

There are a few close-ups of factory and mill yards at http://www.twixtaireandcalder.org.uk, which covers the five towns (Wakefield, Castleford, Normanton, Featherstone and Pontefract).There's a nice picture of a lorry outside Allinson's Flour Mill in Castleford showing stone setts. For the Sykes/Slazenger's factory, which was built just before the WW2 I believe, it's tarmac. If you look at the photos of Charles Roberts, it doesn't appear to be either (there is some nice rolling stock here too).

Variety is the spice of life.

Peter