21,23, LORD STREET

This is a warehouse, or pair of warehouses, dating from the early 19th century and altered subsequently. It is now a furniture showroom. The building is constructed of brown brick, with the facade in Flemish bond and the sides and rear in 4+1 English garden wall bond, featuring sandstone dressings and a slate roof. It has a slightly angled rectangular plan at right angles to the street, axially partitioned. The building is five storeys high, with a basement, and has six bays. The gabled facade is canted back slightly on each side of the midline. A very high plinth is interrupted by 20th-century alterations. The angled two-bay centre has a round-headed blind arch, extending the full height of the building, complete with a small keystone and imposts, and two windows to each of the four upper stages. The flanking bays have loading slots with long-and-short stone quoins. The three stages above the two lower floors survive; the lower floors have very large 20th-century openings. The lintel above one of the top slots is associated with a blocked crane opening, while the lintel of another has been rebuilt and raised, replaced with steel, with a steel crane beam protruding through the door beneath. The ground floor of both flanking bays has board doors, while the other stages are now glazed, or glazed and boarded. The windows in the centre bays and on the three upper stages of the outer bays are almost square, with raised sills and wedge lintels, and altered glazing. The gable features flat stone coping, remnants of an apex finial, and broad flat kneelers. The remains of a former 19th-century building’s front wall are attached to the left corner. The right-hand corner slightly overlaps the Tithebarn Public House. The left-side wall shows a gable mark of a former, earlier three-storey building, including a vertical joint highlighting the junction of the rear wall. The remainder of the left-side wall has windows similar to those at the front: three are blocked at ground floor, five at the first and second floors (recently re-opened), six at the third floor (five boarded and one blocked), and seven at the fourth floor (all now boarded). The right-hand side wall, where not obscured by the Tithebarn, has similar windows, and an extruded chimney near the front. The rear of the building has similar square windows on all floors, some of which are blocked. The interior features pitch-pine beams, supporting all floors (with the exception of the front of the ground floor), supported on continuous timber pads in the partition wall, and with some intermediate posts tenoned into timber saddles. A single-span king-post roof has fishbone struts from the king-posts and intermediate posts, with similar struts on the outer sides to the principal rafters carrying three pairs of purlins; some of these members have carpenters' marks. A suspended lateral timber gutter is lined with lead. The building was likely constructed for putting-out handloom manufacturers; No. 23 was occupied in 1825 by Thomas German & Co., cotton spinners and manufacturers.