104 St James' Street and 1-7 Hammerton Street

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 29 April 2021 to amend the description and to reformat the text to current standards

SD8332NE 906-1/15/135

BURNLEY ST JAMES' STREET (south side) No. 104 and 1-7 Hammerton Street

29/09/77

GVII

HISTORY: this building is one of many in this style designed by Alfred Waterhouse, assisted by his son Paul, for the Prudential Assurance Company. The company’s office was number 104 St James’s Street, with three shops facing Hammerton Street. Alfred Waterhouse RA PPRIBA (1830-1905) is a Gothic Revival architect of national renown, who gained a reputation for grand public buildings, including most famously the Natural History Museum in London (1870-80) and the competition-winning design for Manchester Town Hall (1868-77). He is thought to have been responsible for around 650 buildings in his lifetime; around 40 of these are listed.

DETAILS: shops and offices constructed in 1891 on a corner site, with an elevation to St James’s Street and Hammerton Street. Renaissance Revival style.

MATERIALS: red brick, in Flemish bond, with dressings of buff terracotta and a concealed roof (probably of slate).

PLAN: it is a narrow trapeziform on plan, parallel to Hammerton Street.

EXTERIOR: of four storeys, it has a six bay east elevation to Hammerton Street with a canted single bay to the north-east and a single-bay return (north) to St James’s Street. The ground floor has late-C20 shop frontages; the upper floors have terracotta string courses and some pilasters, and vertically-linked terracotta pilastered architraves to the windows. The windows at first floor level are round-headed and those on the second and third floors are square-headed and coupled, and all have finely carved geometrical panels over them. The fourth to sixth canted bay of the east elevation and return elevation to St James’s Street are more elaborately treated with richly-ornamented terracotta tympani to the windows.

INTERIOR: altered. The upper floors were formerly unoccupied (1991).

Listing NGR: SD8393432606