Sunlight House is a Grade II listed building in the Manchester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 20 June 1988. Office block. 51 related planning applications.
Sunlight House
- WRENN ID
- errant-pediment-laurel
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Manchester
- Constituency
- Manchester Central MP: Lucy Powell (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 20 June 1988
- Type
- Office block
- Address
- Sunlight House, Quay Street, M3 3JZ
- OS grid reference
- SJ 834 980
- Coordinates
- 53.47876, -2.25049
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Sunlight House is an office block located on Quay Street in Manchester, built in 1932 by Joseph Sunlight. It features a steel frame with Portland stone cladding and a slated three-tier mansard roof with a glazed center. The building has a large square plan with a central light-well and is designed in the International Modern style with classical elements. It consists of ten storeys plus four attic storeys that are successively set back. The facade has eight bays, including a wide canted corner on the right that rises to an octagonal turret topped with a domed lantern and an apex finial.
The ground and first floors are treated as a plinth, while the central section has a six-storey, five-bay pilastrade, a moulded frieze above the seventh floor, and an enriched cornice over the eighth floor, culminating in a plain parapet over the tenth floor. The building features very regular fenestration, with three-light casement windows in the five-bay center and two-light windows in the end bays, along with metal panels between the floors. The attic windows are three-light, with those on the first three tiers set in individual projected rectangular dormers.
The ground floor includes shop windows and a round-headed archway. The canted corner is treated as a tower, emphasized by narrow three-light mullioned windows that tier continuously from the second to the tenth floors, with carved decoration above the tenth floor. There is a one-storey drum above this, leading to a set-back two-storey continuation and a set-back lantern. The entrance porch at the ground floor features square-headed doorways. The right and rear elevations are similar but have a slated attic and extruded dormers. Sunlight House forms a group with Royal London House located to the right at Nos 188-202 Deansgate.
Local climate
Sunlight House 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 81% 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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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 1 transaction since 2022
- Related listed building consents — 51 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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