Warehouse

Warehouse at 15 North Street, Liverpool

This is a three-storey warehouse with basement and jigger loft, built around 1875. It is constructed of brick with stone dressings and cast iron features, beneath a slate roof.

The rectangular plan building presents its front elevation to North Street. The brickwork is enlivened by horizontal bands of blue brick, and features round-headed arches to the loading bay with segmental arches to smaller windows. Metal-framed windows with cast iron lintels and mullions are fitted throughout, though some sash windows are now obscured by modern boarding. The North Street elevation is asymmetrically arranged with an off-centre recessed loading bay flanked on the left by the original doorway with small stairwell windows to each floor above, and on the right by large tripartite windows to each floor. The loading bay doors are of timber. A later door has been inserted at the right end of the North Street elevation. A parapet rises above the slates along the top of the elevation. The right return elevation is rendered over brick in modern work, with a door at the right end and two chimney stacks, one of which is truncated, rising above it.

Internally, the original door leads to a stair compartment defined by a partially curved internal brick wall and lit at ground floor level by a fanlight, now blocked, over the door. The stair is of newel form with wooden treads, providing access to the basement and all floors. Original doors from the stair compartment are of timber. The internal structure comprises timber floors with heavy cross-beams, joists and floorboards. At basement, ground and first floor levels these beams are supported by cast-iron columns arranged in a row down the centre of each floor. The roof trusses incorporate a tie-beam, principal rafters, king post and V-struts, with two sets of side purlins held by chocks on the back of the principal rafters. The king-posts are through bolted to the tie-beams. In one corner of the basement the ceiling features a metal plate with a circular opening, possibly originally for a metal flue rising through the warehouse to emerge above roof level.

The warehouse was built around 1875 at a time when Liverpool's port had achieved international significance in the volume of goods passing through the city and the range of countries traded with. In 1888 it was occupied by R & G Maddox, fruit merchants. By 1894 it served as a polish warehouse; in 1908 it was used by printers, and in 1929 by a wholesale provision merchant. At an unspecified date a staircase was inserted into the building. The warehouse was linked to the adjacent warehouse at 13 North Street at an unspecified date before 1882, with connections made at ground and upper floor levels sealed by iron fire doors in metal frames. Original windows in the side wall of 15 North Street were blocked at this time and remain visible at some points in the party wall. Most recently the building was used as a night club until the mid to late-1990s, after which it remained unused. All insertions from this nightclub phase are considered easily reversible. The use of timber for windows and loading bay doors indicates that the builders made no attempt to qualify for reduced insurance premiums offered to improve fire-resistant qualities.