Elephant Tea Warehouse and Grocers

Elephant Tea Warehouse and Grocers

A grocers and tea warehouse built between 1873 and 1877 for Grimshaw & Son to designs by architect Frank Caws. The building is Hindu-Gothic in style, with terracotta work by Doulton & Co and contractor Henry Hopper. It incorporates an early-19th-century house and a later-19th-century building to its rear, with 20th-century ground floor and other internal alterations.

The 1870s building uses polychrome materials of red and white brick, terracotta and faience, with a slate roof topped by terracotta crestings. Faience gable copings and faience and brick chimneys complete the roof. The early-19th-century house is hand-made brick with painted ashlar dressings beneath a Welsh slate roof and brick chimney. The later-19th-century rear building is red brick with ashlar dressings.

The plan is L-shaped, with a purpose-built grocers and tea warehouse occupying a corner site at the junction of Fawcett Street and High Street West. Attached to the left is a rectangular early-19th-century house, separated at the rear from a rectangular later-19th-century building by a rectangular inner court or light well.

The prominent 1870s building occupies two storeys plus attic and basement. It has four first-floor windows to Fawcett Street and five first-floor windows to High Street West, with a canted corner. The ground floor has a glazed 20th-century shop front with a full-width tiled 20th-century fascia. The segmental pointed-arched arcaded first floor features clasping rings and crocket capitals to nook shafts, with alternate block jambs, raised pointed arches and a roll-moulded dripstring. Within each arch sits an ogee-arched sash window set back within the arcade. Window heads have fleur-de-lis finials in front of lozenge-patterned terracotta spandrels, each lozenge containing a flower design. Windows have sash frames with sloping faience sills. The eaves cornice has a corbelled trefoil frieze. Attic windows have faience surrounds similar to the first-floor arcade, with alternate coloured block jambs. Windows within each arch comprise a trefoil-headed transom light over small mullioned lights, placed within a high gable with paired round-headed niches in banded faience decoration and moulded coping above.

Between gables, faience elephants carrying tea chests are set in bracketed corniced shelves under bracketed gables with trefoil barge boards, crocket decoration and elaborate finials. A round oriel corner turret with nook-shafts has an arcaded central light and blind arches below a band of linked splayed shafts and a wide eaves with gargoyles. Above this sits a further band of gablets at the foot of a bicolour banded round turret with bracketed eaves and a Buddhist-style conical faience roof with a series of ringed ribs. An inscription along the turret records Doulton & Co as manufacturers of the terracotta and Henry Hopper as the builder. The steeply-pitched roof has ridges from each gable and tall chimneys with faience copings behind the elephant gablets.

Attached and considerably lower in height is a former three-bay, three-storey town house on Fawcett Street. Above the 20th-century ground floor shop front and fascia, it is constructed of hand-made brick with windows featuring wedge stone lintels and projecting stone sills. First-floor windows have renewed plain sashes and second-floor windows are smaller casements. An eaves gutter cornice and stone-coped parapet are present, above which are small flat-headed dormer windows and a tall right transverse-ridge chimney.

The later-19th-century building to the rear fronts Station Street as red brick with ashlar dressings beneath a pitched slate roof. It has three storeys and three bays and was probably constructed as a warehouse. The ground floor has a later brick facade with a broad shop fascia, pierced by an entrance and a pair of plain, barred window openings. First-floor round-headed windows have heavy keyed stone heads resting on a decorative stone impost band, fitted with fixed and casement frames. Second-floor segmental-headed windows rest upon a stone moulded sill band with similar stone heads to the first floor. A decorative frieze sits at the eaves immediately beneath a moulded eaves cornice, and stone verges terminate in prominent moulded round-headed water tables.

Internally, the three buildings function as a single unit, joined at the centre by a full-height light well. Interiors are plain with suspended ceilings and inserted WCs. The ground floor is largely open-plan with original partitions removed during its conversion to a bank. A timber staircase in its original position rises through the full height of the building, boxed in at ground floor level, with a moulded hand rail and newel posts of alternate rectangular and turned sections. Upper parts have plain stick balusters considered to be original. A plain secondary staircase in its original position gives direct access from High Street West to the first floor. The first floor retains original window joinery to all three former buildings, including moulded timber architraves, panelled soffits, jambs and aprons. Historic features include a simple fireplace, round-headed alcove, plaster coving, simple timber boards to walls, a four-panel door and a gas mantle to the former early-19th-century house, plus windows and joinery to the light well. In places the internal rain water system is visible within the walls as cast-iron gutters. The King Post roof structure remains with some replacement timbers and what appear to be assembly marks to its main trusses. The basement has cast-iron columns supporting the floors above.