10 and 12, Blackfriars Street

This warehouse and office building at 10 and 12 Blackfriars Street, Salford, was constructed in 1884 and designed by FH Oldham of Manchester. It is built with ashlar facing and is in a Flemish Renaissance style. The building is five storeys high with an attic, and has five unequal bays, creating a continuous band of windows on each floor. A doorway is located to the right, flanked by three-light mullioned and transomed windows with recessed decorative ironwork grilles. Above the doorway is a steep pediment supported by pilasters springing from corbels, topped by a traceried overlight above a segmental archway. A rear entrance is to the right of the doorway, accessed through cast-iron gates. The upper floors are articulated by pilasters defining the bays. Paired central windows and oriel windows are featured on the first floor, with the oriels continuing to the second floor, incorporating strapwork decoration and pediments. A coved frieze depicting paired winged dragons sits above the paired central second-floor windows. The third and fourth floors have low mullioned and transomed windows linked by pilaster strips, with bays divided by polygonal pilasters with Corinthian capitals. A balconette and pediment adorn the central paired windows on the fifth floor, and a pedimented Dutch gable sits over the central three bays, featuring traceried attic windows, polygonal pilasters and heraldic finials. To the left, a later addition from 1916 consists of a single-storey advanced section with a four-centred arched doorway and embattled parapet, extending the decorative theme of numbers 14 and 16 Blackfriars Street. Behind this addition is a three-storey brick block with stone mullioned and transomed windows, each with a four-centred relieving arch, and a machicolated cornice to the parapet. The interior has not been inspected.