47 Piccadilly including warehouse facing Back Piccadilly

47 Piccadilly, Manchester, is a town house with an attached rear warehouse. The house dates from probably 1776, while the warehouse is from the mid-19th century, though it incorporates 18th-century fabric. Both structures have been altered over time.

The building is constructed of brown brick with stucco to the front and slate roofs. Its plan comprises a linear range aligned approximately north-south, with a double-pile house and rear warehouse separated by a lightwell.

The three-storey south façade fronts onto Piccadilly within the Stevenson Square Conservation Area. It is substantially more refined than contemporary purpose-built workshop dwellings. The stucco front is scored to resemble ashlar masonry and is now painted. A modern shopfront occupies the ground floor. The façade is three bays wide beneath a low parapet and modillion eaves cornice, which extends at the left over a narrow recessed vertical strip. The second-floor window openings (externally boarded in 2019) have quirked-bead surrounds with a continuous sill band. The first-floor openings are taller, with moulded architraves, pilasters and cornices, housing replacement mock-sashes; their sills are concealed by the shopfront cornice. An external roller shutter obscures the entrance to the left of the shopfront.

The west wall is largely obscured by supporting scaffolding. Where visible, it is roughly laid and unpointed brick with extensive mortar snots extruded through the joints. At the south end, the ridge chimney stack of the house rises the full height of the adjacent building's west wall.

The north wall facing Back Piccadilly is of brick, predominantly laid in English Bond but with English Garden Wall bond in the gable. This wall has a ground-floor shopfront with external roller shutters, and a shallow gable with stone-coped verges. The right-hand bay contains a loading slot vertically spanning the upper bays, with recessed wooden doors and cut-off projecting beams over the upper door, with altered brickwork in the lintel above. Other lintels are segmental arches of soldier bricks. Windows are timber vertical-sliding sashes with slender meeting rails and no horns; the upper floor has a single vertical glazing bar per sash, while the first floor has no glazing bars and inserted extraction fans plus modern security grilles. The east wall, formed by or abutting number 49, is not visible externally.

Between the house and warehouse, the eastern half of the plot is a former yard, now covered at ground floor with a felt roof but open to the sky above, with white paint or wash covering the walls to eaves level. The south wall of the house contains two window openings with wide stone sills and flat lintels. The blue-slate roof is visible, with the ridge stack running up the side of the adjacent building. The west side of the yard is formed by the east wall of the rear wing to the house, containing the stair landings; each landing has a window opening with stone sill and segmental head. This wall is of hand-made brick of late-18th or early-19th-century date and rises above the house eaves with a south return which is gabled. The north side is formed by the south wall of the warehouse, which is gabled with stone copings, the gable continuing across the north face of the rear wing. It has large openings with 20th-century windows and stone sills.

The ground-floor shop extends beneath the former yard and contains entirely modern shopfittings. The entrance to the left of the shop opens into a hallway with 20th-century floor tiles and suspended ceiling, above which a modillion cornice survives. The basement is accessed via a closed-string stair enclosed by modern partition, with a small area of Victorian floor tiling at its foot. Some Victorian doors and architraves remain. The front portion of the basement beneath the house is partitioned off and retains a chimney breast. To the rear, 18th-century brickwork of the rear wing is visible, with a straight vertical joint to 19th-century brickwork of a small room added to the north. A rolled steel joist supports the floor above. To the east of the rear wing, the basement is open to the warehouse beyond.

On the west side between the house and warehouse is a three-storey lightwell retaining traces of limewash to its walls. The ground floor has an iron grate draining into the basement, and a ground-floor window blocked with 19th-century bricks. Window openings on the first and second floors in the north and south walls have stone sills and soldier-brick segmental arches. Three of these retain partially-surviving 18th-century windows, which are vertical-sliding sashes with vertical glazing bars.

The house stair has a ramped banister rail with boxed-in balustrade and inserted nosers. Former toilets on the landings in the rear outshut retain some lath-and-plaster ceilings and windows looking into the lightwell. The second floor has ceilings with lightwells to former skylights, lined with lath-and-plaster. It also retains some lath-and-plaster ceilings, late-19th-century sash windows to the front openings, the chimney breast, and lime plaster to the walls.

The rear warehouse is open at basement and second floor. 21st-century shoring supports the western wall in the basement. Timber beams to each floor are carried by iron shoes attached to the side walls, largely concealed by suspended ceilings at ground and first floors, which also contain much 20th-century partitioning. A chimney breast abuts the west wall from ground floor to second floor and projects through the roof. The second floor has a ridge skylight, late-19th-century lattice trusses, and a hoist in the north-west corner. In the south-east corner a plasterboard cubicle conceals the northern wall of the lightwell. An opening in the partition reveals the second-floor window opening in the brick wall forming the north side of the lightwell, with a stone sill, through which the windows in the south wall of the rear wing are visible. The second-floor window is missing its lintel and the outer skin of adjacent brickwork above. The west side of the lightwell has a brick abutment from the first floor down.