Dock Office At North End Of Hudson Dock With Hydraulic Accumulator, Walls And Piers

SUNDERLAND

NZ4157 HUDSON DOCK NORTH 920-1/13/117 (North side) 10/11/78 Dock Office at N end of Hudson Dock with hydraulic accumulator, walls & piers (Formerly Listed as: HUDSON DOCK NORTH The Dock Office)

GV II

Dock office and walls and piers attached. 1850. By John Murray. For Sunderland Dock Company. Hydraulic accumulator inserted c1875 for swing bridge, designed by Sir W Armstrong & Co, for River Wear Commission. Coursed squared limestone with ashlar sandstone dressings and tower; Welsh slate roof with ashlar chimney. Modified Baroque style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, 3x3 bays with E staircase wing and SE tower. N elevation has alternate block surrounds and projecting flat stone lintels to double doors with overlight at centre and in left stair wing. Staircase doors panelled. Similar jambs and projecting flat sills and lintels to ground-floor windows. First floor and first floor sill bands. First-floor windows have lugged architraves with raised voussoirs, the central rising as key across entablature. Sashes with glazing bars, in left bay and over door replaced with casements. Rusticated quoins; top entablature with gutter cornice and blocking course. Low-pitched hipped roof has corniced ridge chimney. Right return has central upper window blocked, and fire door inserted with external fire escape; sashes with glazing bars in left bay which now contains hydraulic accumulator for swing bridge. Rear left return has tower with slit lights and clock faces in top stage below bracketed cornice and blocking course. INTERIOR shows ground floor house and first floor office, now all offices; panelled doors with architraves; some original chimney pieces and simple stucco decoration. Hydraulic accumulator inserted behind first right return bay has walls apparently of wood which may be concrete with shuttering marking, and retains machinery. Tower stair to clock chamber, now used for access to dock traffic lights, has renewed balustrade with a few original stick balusters but handrail renewed in straight sections. High stone yard wall with ashlar coping on left return encloses triangular area between stair and tower and has entrance with two square piers with flat stone coping, one damaged. Adjacent swing bridge (qv) has original machinery but is now not operated by this hydraulic accumulator. (Corfe T: The Buildings of Sunderland 1814-1914.: Newcastle upon Tyne: 1983-: 18; Milburn GE and Miller ST: Sunderland River, Town and People: Sunderland: 1988-: 17).

Listing NGR: NZ4104157706