The 18th-century industrial building in Guadalajara

The Laboratorio de los Ingleses is an industrial building located in Guadalajara, situated along the CM-101 road. Constructed between 1786 and 1787, it was part of a larger industrial complex initiated by Fernando VI to establish a fine cloth manufacturing industry in the country. The building was designed with functional criteria, resulting in a simple structure without ornaments, entirely oriented toward its industrial use.

The facility was part of the Real Fábrica de Paños de Guadalajara, which was the most important industry in the province during the 18th century. When the workshops closed in 1822, the properties passed to various uses, mainly military ones. The laboratory building itself is one of the few new-build structures employed by the cloth factory, as many of its other installations reused older buildings. Today, the building is in a state of progressive decay and was declared a site of heritage interest in 2016.

The architecture features a rectangular plan with three levels: a ground floor, a first floor, and an attic. It is built with load-bearing brick walls covered with lime stucco and a four-pitched roof of teja árabe. While the original layout included various rooms for specific purposes, a renovation replaced a ground-floor interior wall with a structure of riveted metal beams. Nearby, remains of a fulling mill from the first half of the 18th century can still be seen in the surroundings.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons