Onward Buildings is a Grade II listed building in the Manchester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 6 June 1994. Band of hope building, shop, offices. 6 related planning applications.
Onward Buildings
- WRENN ID
- ragged-hearth-summer
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Manchester
- Constituency
- Manchester Central MP: Lucy Powell (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 6 June 1994
- Type
- Band of hope building, shop, offices
- Address
- Onward Buildings, 205-209, Deansgate, M3 3NW
- OS grid reference
- SJ 835 980
- Coordinates
- 53.47867, -2.24906
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Onward Buildings is a former Band of Hope building, now used as shops and offices, constructed between 1903 and 1905 by architect Charles Heathcote. The building is made of red brick with yellow terracotta dressings and features a slate roof. It has a rectangular plan oriented at right angles to the street, with rounded corners and is designed in a Free Baroque style.
The facade is four stories high and has five windows, arranged symmetrically. The ground and third floors are banded, and there is a prominent bracketed cornice above. The hipped roof is adorned with banded chimneys on the front and sides. The ground floor features a central round-headed entrance arch with a cavetto surround and a keystone decorated with foliation, a mask, and raised lettering that reads "BAND OF HOPE." Above the arch is a curved balcony with wrought-iron railings, flanked by wide segmental-headed windows.
The first and second floors have cross-windows, with the first-floor windows being taller and featuring eared architraves and triple keystones, while the second-floor windows have shouldered architraves and single keystones. The third floor includes keyed oculi, and above the cornice, there is a flat-roofed dormer situated between the chimneys. The corners of the building are chamfered at the ground floor and curved above, with similar windows on the first and second floors, and the applied lettering "ONWARD BUILDINGS" is positioned between these windows. The returned sides of the building are similar but simpler.
The interior reportedly contains a meeting hall with plaques or tiles from Lancashire Temperance Societies. This building was constructed for the federation of Temperance Societies.
Local climate
Onward Buildings sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,060 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 85% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 77% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 43 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 84% of listed buildings. Of these, 23 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 6 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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