5, Baillie Street

A purpose-built shop dating to around 1840, later used as a railway parcel and enquiry office. The building is constructed of mellow orange brick with sandstone (heavily painted) and has a slate roof.

Plan and Layout

The ground floor comprises a large shop with an entrance lobby positioned to the left (west) side, served by a staircase in a stair wing projecting to the rear. The first and second floors have altered room layouts.

Exterior

The ground floor displays seven bays of stone with a cornice forming a sill band for the first-floor windows. The most prominent feature is a deeply recessed, round-headed doorway in the left-hand bay. This doorway is enriched with outer and inner torus bands featuring bay-leaf garlands, narrow inset panels to each side with relief festoons of flowers, a coffered archway, and a large central acanthus leaf with lion head ancon. Above the door are egg-and-dart and guilloche bands, and a tympanum containing a central roundel with relief carving of a flower (possibly a passion flower), with acanthus leaf spandrels. At the base of the doorway are curved bumpers. The door itself has two full-width moulded panels with two square panels above, with metal studs to the stiles and rails. Triangular spandrels with relief foliate carving flank the doorway. To the right is an arcade of six closely spaced windows with round-headed torus band frames featuring bay-leaf garlands to the arches and central, garlanded console brackets supporting miniature scrolled pediments with egg-and-dart mouldings that overlap the cornice. Each window frame contains a tympanum with individually detailed relief festoons of acanthus leaves and other plants including grapes and hops, with a guilloche band beneath, alternately plain or enriched. Flower roundels appear between the frame arches. All windows have two-light horned sash frames with a plain unornamented plinth band.

The upper floors are constructed of brick in Flemish bond with deep timber bracketed eaves. The second floor has three evenly spaced windows with a stone sill band (painted black) and gauged brick lintels. The first floor has five windows with a cornice sill band and gauged brick lintels; three align with the windows above. The first and fourth windows of the first floor appear to be later insertions, as their brick lintels differ in appearance, being composed of shorter, paler bricks. All windows have two-light hornless sash frames.

Interior

The entrance lobby is square and fitted with geometric encaustic tiles. To the right lies the shop, which retains no original features. To the rear is a well staircase with turned timber newel posts, ramped handrail, and stick balusters.

The first floor contains two rooms to the front and one large, irregularly shaped room to the east rear, all with chimney breasts but no fireplaces. The east front room (now subdivided) features a round-headed niche on each side of the chimney breast and a moulded cornice. The second floor retains no original features.

History and Use

Baillie Street was laid out around 1835 as part of a small grid of new streets imposed on the east side of Rochdale town centre, as shown on the town map of that year. The street was named after Colonel Hugh Duncan Baillie, the landowner. No properties appear in the 1837 trade directory, suggesting they were still under construction. By 1843, a William Fulton, a spirit, ale, and porter merchant, is recorded at Baillie Street. He appears again in 1851, when the trade directory lists No. 5 as 'Porter dealers, Fulton and Dow (and ale)'. The 1851 six-inch Ordnance Survey map and 1:500 town map show the building with a trapezoid shape and a stair wing projecting at the west end of the rear elevation, a configuration apparently dictated by pre-existing buildings on Yorkshire Street to the north.

In 1861, the property was still operated as a wine and spirits merchants by J H Kirtley. In 1869, Kirtley had relocated to 25 Baillie Street, and No. 5 became the Enquiry and Parcel Office for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Line. By 1899-1900, the premises were shared with the Great Central Railway Company. In 1916, the building served as a joint office for the Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North Western, and Midland Railways, and also housed the Rochdale Card and Blowing Room and Ring Spinners Association. By 1935, the railway companies had vacated, though the Association remained, along with H Marsh, scale makers.

More recently, No. 5 has been occupied by various building societies, a solicitors' firm, and a shop on the ground floor.