104 St James' Street and 1-7 Hammerton Street

This building, constructed in 1891, is a combined retail and office building on a corner site, with frontages to both St James’s Street and Hammerton Street in Burnley. It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, assisted by his son Paul, for the Prudential Assurance Company. Alfred Waterhouse was a nationally recognised Gothic Revival architect, best known for his designs for the Natural History Museum in London and Manchester Town Hall.

The building is built in a Renaissance Revival style, using red brick in Flemish bond, with terracotta dressings. The main elevation to Hammerton Street has six bays, with a canted bay to the north-east and a return bay to St James’s Street. The ground floor features late 20th-century shop frontages. The upper floors are characterised by terracotta string courses, pilasters, and vertically-linked, terracotta-framed windows. First-floor windows are round-headed, while those on the second and third floors are square-headed and paired, all featuring finely carved geometrical panels above. The final three bays of the Hammerton Street elevation and the return elevation to St James’s Street have particularly elaborate terracotta tympani over the windows. The building’s plan is a narrow trapezoidal shape, parallel to Hammerton Street. The interior has been altered; the upper floors were previously unoccupied.