Former Coppersmiths Shop And Warehouses With Offices Attached

Former Coppersmiths' Shop and Warehouses with Offices Attached, Newcastle upon Tyne

A coppersmiths' shop and brass foundry with attached offices, now used as builders' merchants' storage. The building occupies South Street at ground level, with offices to the north and a probable former house with storage on the lower level to Hanover Street, now disused. The western rooms of the offices likely pre-date the first lease of 1 August 1823 and feature a first floor bow window. The building was extended eastwards in 1825 to accommodate the newly formed company of George Stephenson & Son. The coppersmiths' shop and brass foundry with storage below date to around 1845 and were built by Amor Spoor, then leased to Robert Stephenson & Co. A fire in 1934 destroyed many original features, and the bow window was not replaced as found according to the lease.

The south elevation to Hanover Street is constructed in English bond brick with ashlar plinth and dressings. The west elevation of the offices to South Street is painted render, while other elevations are brick where visible, though obscured by adjacent buildings. The roofs are Welsh slate to the coppersmiths' shop; the offices have glazed roof light strips. The offices present as two storeys to South Street, with the coppersmiths' shop, house and storage below occupying three to four storeys on the south elevation following the steep slope to Hanover Street. The offices are two storeys, arranged in two bays of six bays with a gable end to South Street. The ground floor has a boarded door at the left and iron bars to the window at the right; the upper floor has two windows with projecting painted stone sills, the left with mullion and transom and the right blocked. The roof is hipped.

The interior ground floor was not inspected. A plain wood stair leads to the first floor, which has a blocked fireplace at the right on the south wall with a painted segmental lintel and inner brick piers flanking the hearth; at the left is a blocked window. The roof contains six king post trusses with diagonal struts, and a bell frame is attached to the second truss. The roof is lined with boards above and below glazed strips. The entrance to the coppersmiths' shop is at the top floor, down a short flight of steps from a small wedge-shaped roofed yard on the south side of the former offices. The floor below contains storage and a covered passage to the former Back Hanover Street.

The lowest level on the south elevation to Hanover Street was not inspected. It comprises a former house at the left of two storeys with two windows, with a wedge stone lintel to a blocked door at the right with projecting stone step; similar lintels and projecting stone sills apply to two windows at the left, the left blocked and the right boarded. Similar lintels and sills are present to two blocked first floor windows. To the right the plinth steps up as the ground rises, and there are two storeys with one window and blocked door at the right; the ground floor window is smaller than but similar to those at the left, the first floor a small blocked window with round brick arch and projecting stone sill. To the right of this is a two-storey high arch with rusticated quoins, voussoirs and keystone, formerly over Back Hanover Street which ran to the left through the building. Three storeys to the right of the arch have a blank ground floor. The floor above the arch has small openings with round brick arches, projecting stone sills and wrought iron grids, interspersed with blocked loading doors. Above these, on the left of the arch, is a single small square opening. The top floor has thirteen small square openings with wood-lined reveals. The eaves are partly painted with stone gutter brackets. The right bays have cast iron plates of tie rods above round-headed windows.

The interior of the top floor shows wide ashlar corbels to a chimney at the west end, perhaps from the former brass foundry; the east gable has a rubble inner leaf. A colonnade formerly open to the yard has round tapered cast iron piers supporting a long beam parallel to the front Hanover Street frontage, and this beam supports king post trusses. The east part has queen post trusses resting on wallplates. Some large skylights are present in the north roof slope. Lower floors were not inspected.

Amor Spoor was the builder and developer of warehouses dated 1841 and 1844 on the south side of Hanover Street (listed Grade II), constructed in the same brickwork and imposing style as this building. The Seymour Bell portfolio contains an early Robert Stephenson & Co document relating to a lease dated 1845 of 'Spoor's Building'; plans in the same folder signed by Amor Spoor and Robert Stephenson identify this building on the north side of Hanover Street. The offices are shown on the 1831 1:500 survey of Newcastle by Thomas Oliver and on an 1837 site survey by him marked as offices, and shown as part of the coppersmiths' shop on the 1863 1:500 Ordnance Survey. The earliest lease documentation for Robert Stephenson & Co is dated 1 August 1823, and further documents relating to the lease are dated August 1823 and March 1847.