3 St Mary's Parsonage

Textile warehouse of 1868, by Clegg and Knowles, with alterations. Venetian Gothic style.

MATERIALS: red brick with pressed-brick and buff sandstone dressings, blue slate roof.

PLAN: trapezoid.

EXTERIOR: prominently-sited on a corner of St Mary’s Parsonage in the Parsonage Gardens Conservation Area and somewhat overshadowed by the multi-storey car park to the east, but complemented by 31 and 33 King Street West (including the carriage workshop to the rear and warehouse at 3 Smithy Lane), to which it is currently (2020) linked by a short bridge (not included in the listing).

Three storeys tall over a basement, with an added floor in the mansard roof. The main front faces north, a six-bay facade with stone plinth, sill-bands to all floors, and projecting cornice on brick brackets. Stone-shouldered gauged-brick, flat-arched basement windows are protected by decorative railings (with modern replacement railings in bays 2 and 4). The ground-floor openings form an arcade, all round-headed with pointed-arched extradoses and hood-moulds, and linking carved imposts. The centre two have stone arches and the others are stone-and-brick-banded, but all have incised decoration on the stone. Bay 3 is the entrance, the others are four-pane sashes. There are raised brick roundels in the spandrels and a Lombard frieze over the whole. The first and second floors are entirely of brick but in similar style, except that the first-floor windows are segmental-headed with segmental-pointed extradoses, and sashed without glazing bars, and the second floor lacks the roundels. The mansard roof has five irregularly-spaced attic windows.

The ten-bay east façade is similar, but all in brick except for the sill bands and the ground-floor surround to a former entrance in bay 3. The first five basement windows are blocked, there is a blocked later former entrance in bay 6, and bay 8 has a brick bunker. Bays 7 and 9 retain original railings. At the left the bridge link to 31 and 33 King Street West is visible.

The west and south façades are plainer with stone sill-bands, brick eaves-band and plain stone parapet coping without cornice. Windows have stepped brick surrounds and are segmental-arched, mostly timber sashes with panes as per the north and east. The west façade is shorter than the east and of eight bays. Bay 3 has a former entrance, now blocked and with a window; bay 6 has an entrance in a former window, and bay 7 has a blocked entrance, with blocked stair lights to the ground and first floors, and a brick tower in the roof. The south is similar and of six bays. The bridge link (not included in the listing) is at first-floor level in bay 5, of glass and steel. Bay 4 has a blocked entrance.

INTERIOR: the entrance retains skirting and stair handrails, and cast-iron columns are visible in the ground floor and basement. Interior fittings are modern with suspended ceilings. The stair is post-war with blonde woodwork.