Former Gas Board Offices With Walls And Piers Attached

The former Gas Board Offices, now known as Community in Industry offices, were built around 1900. They are constructed of bright red brick with yellow faience dressings and feature a roof made of graduated Lakeland slates, dark ridge tiles, and brick and faience chimneys. The building has a curved plan and is designed in a Renaissance style.

The exterior consists of three storeys with a window arrangement of 2:3:2:3:2. The ground floor is arcaded, with hollow reveals surrounding alternate block doorways in bays 4 and 7, and windows with upper glazing bars in other bays, except for three elliptical arched display windows that have slender mullions and transoms. The first-floor casements, which also have glazing bars, are supported by rusticated pilasters for grouped pairs, featuring moulded sills and flat lintels below a third-floor string. The gabled third floor contains groups of three lights, each with keyed segmental heads and architraves with Gibbs surrounds.

The gables are adorned with three tall round-headed windows that have glazing bars and are topped with keyed round shell heads. The windows and blind outer bays are flanked by pilasters that rise to an entablature; the outer pair features ball-and-spike finials, the next is pedimented, and the inner pair continues into a pedimented gable. There is a segmental pediment over the central gable. The returns of the building have shaped gables, with the left side featuring a long bracket supporting a panelled ridge chimney above a pent extension that has three segmental-headed first-floor lights. A high wall extends to the left from the pent extension, ending in a tall square pier with pyramidal coping, while a similar pier to the left forms a wide entrance to the yard.