South Warehouse To Rear Of Wharf Masters House At Manchester Road Canal Wharf

The South Warehouse, located behind the Wharf Master's House at Manchester Road Canal Wharf in Burnley, is a canal warehouse with an integral cottage, now used as a store. It was built between 1796 and 1800 in two sections for the Leeds-Liverpool Canal Company and has been slightly altered. The building is constructed from coursed squared sandstone and features a stone slate roof. It has a rectangular plan that runs parallel to the canal, with the former cottage situated at the right-hand (south) end.

The structure is two storeys high and has five windows, with a vertical joint approximately two-thirds of the way from the south end. Each section includes a pair of wide segmental-headed loading doorways, one slightly offset to the left of centre and the other at the left end. These doorways have long-and-short quoined jambs, plain voussoirs, and double board doors. The central doorways retain remnants of wooden staging for the upper doorway. To the left of these doorways, there is the iron footing and jib-head of a former crane, with the wall at ground floor coved inwards for the former counter-weight.

Both sections feature 3-light mullioned windows with flat-faced flush mullions, with a pair on each floor flanking the central loading doorways and one on each floor to the right of the other doorways. The former cottage at the right-hand end has a late 19th-century two-storey canted bay window, a tall doorway to the left with an altered door and overlight, and a window above. The rear of the building, facing the yard, has a full-length stone platform at ground floor, with loading doorways that correspond to those on the canal side (both with 20th-century staging) and two 3-light mullioned windows, although the cottage portion has been rendered and altered.

The interiors have not been inspected. The South Warehouse forms a group with the Wharf Master's House and Toll Office at the south end, the two warehouses added at the north end, the stable block on the east side of the yard, and the Manchester Road Canal Bridge.