The Cotton Exchange

The Cotton Exchange is a former Cotton Exchange, later used as a cinema, built in 1862-65 by Brakespear of Manchester. It is constructed of coursed ashlar with slate roofs and is designed in the High Victorian Gothic style. The design is incomplete, as one wing and the central tower were never built, resulting in an asymmetrical plan. Only the octagonal entrance and the northern wing were constructed.

The octagonal entrance features twin pointed entrances with elaborately carved, foliated cusping to the two-light trefoliated heads and quatrefoil tracery, set in splayed, perpendicular, traceried, panelled reveals to the moulded pointed porch. Each bay is distinguished by an octagonal plinthed buttress with a crenellated apex ogee finial. A continuous moulded string course separates the ground and first floors, with each floor featuring three-light perpendicular traceried pointed openings with a hood mould and off-set buttresses between each face. The crenellated parapet is canted on a bossed, coved moulded cornice with gargoyles at the corners, and the octagonal roof has bands of fish-scale shaped tiles with a flagpole at the apex.

The north elevation is two storeys high and nine bays wide. Bays 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 have deeply-set, square headed moulded reveals to what were originally shop doors, now glazed at ground floor level. Two-light, square-headed cusped and traceried cross windows alternate with canted bay windows in bays 2, 4, 6, and 8; these are plain at ground floor level but have six-light, square-headed, traceried, transomed, mullioned, and cusped windows above. A bossed, coved, and moulded continuous hood mould with gargoyles at the bay window cant points runs along the top, above a plain, five-course upper wall crenellated parapet.

The north wing is linked to the octagonal entrance by an angled two-storey bay, with the upper storey featuring a six-light, square-headed, traceried, transomed, mullioned, and cusped window. The interior has been extensively altered to accommodate three cinemas and has not been inspected. The building is notable for being the location of Charles Dickens’ last public reading.