8 Brougham Terrace, (Formerly listed as Brougham Terrace)

This house, forming part of a terrace, was built around 1830. It became the Liverpool Muslim Institute in 1889 and was converted for office use in the early 20th century.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed of mellow red brick with a channelled and lined-out stucco finish to the front elevation. It features yellow and pink sandstone dressings, an eaves cornice, a shallow parapet, and slate roof covering with wide brick stacks.

Layout and Context

The building originally formed part of a terrace of twelve houses but is now attached to a late 19th-century public office building at the south-west end and numbers 9 and 10 Brougham Terrace (separately listed at Grade II) at the north-east end. Internally, number 8 has an entrance hall along the western side of the ground floor and two large rooms on each floor—one each to the front and rear—separated by a staircase set at a right angle to the main entrance. The second floor has mainly been subdivided for conversion into student accommodation. At the time of writing in 2018, the building, along with numbers 9 and 10, is undergoing a programme of restoration and conversion to a heritage centre.

Front Elevation

The front (north-west) elevation is identically styled to its neighbours at numbers 9 and 10, with a stucco finish incorporating banded rustication to the ground floor. The house is two bays wide with a raised ground floor. The entrance doorway to the right is accessed by a short flight of stone steps with ramped cast-iron railings that also enclose open wells in front of the basement windows. The doorway has a doorcase incorporating a shallow hood supported by carved consoles and a four-panel door with a rectangular overlight above. To the left is an eight-over-eight sash window. Tall six-over-nine windows exist to the first floor with a plain sill band below, and three-over-six windows exist to the second floor. It has been suggested that the call to prayer was carried out from a first-floor balcony that has since been removed, but no photographic or written evidence of a balcony has been found. The roof is hidden from view by an eaves cornice and parapet. Early 21st-century conservation skylights exist to both the front and rear roof pitches but cannot be seen from ground level. Chimneystacks also exist to both front and rear roof pitches in line with the north-east party wall.

Rear Elevation

At the rear (south-east elevation) the building is of mellow red brick with sandstone wedge lintels and sills to the windows. Six-over-six and eight-over-eight windows exist to the first floor and three-over-six windows to the second floor. A single-bay outrigger projects out from the rear elevation and rises from the basement to first-floor level, although it is now largely hidden within a mosque extension, which is a long single-storey extension constructed in 1889 as a purpose-built mosque. This extension is also of brick with pressed-brick dressings and a pitched roof with an eaves cornice and a rendered south-east gable end. Three window openings exist to the north-east side with sills and segmental-arched heads composed of pressed-brick headers. The window openings were blocked up when Liverpool Corporation took over the building and have been re-opened in the early 21st century, with new frames with paired pointed-arched lights and glazing inserted. Attached to the south-east gable end is a further lower flat-roofed range, which is believed to have been constructed as part of a larger late 19th- or early 20th-century extension at the rear of the neighbouring former West Derby Union Offices and does not form part of number 8.

Interior

Internally the building has an entrance hall alongside the south-west wall of the ground floor with the rooms and stair off to the north-east side. Doorways and arches have been inserted into the party walls on each floor level to interconnect the building with numbers 9 and 10. Painted cast-iron fireplaces survive in a number of the ground- and first-floor rooms, and plaster arches and plain and decorative cornicing are present throughout—some of the cornicing is original and some is replaced in the same or similar style to the original—along with deep moulded skirtings. Some moulded door and window architraves and panelled reveals survive, along with a small number of window shutters and a couple of original six-panel doors, although the majority of the doors have been replaced by modern six-panel oak fire doors. Some floorboard floors survive, but others have been replaced by tiled and laminate floor coverings.

A timber dog-leg stair that rises between the basement and second floor is located to the centre of the house and is set at a right angle to the front door and entrance hallway. The stair has turned newel posts, stick balusters, handrails, and cut strings and is temporarily boarded over due to the restoration works. The rear ground-floor room has been subdivided to create two toilets and a ladies' prayer hall.

The 1889 Mosque Extension

The 1889 mosque extension at the rear is accessed through the main entrance hall, which has an early 21st-century tiled floor. At the south-east end of the hallway is an early 21st-century Moorish-style arch, similarly styled to an original arch depicted in a probable late 19th-century photograph, that was removed when the mosque was converted into a strong room serving the registry office. The mosque's original features were also removed at the time of the conversion, and a combination of replica and new features have been installed.

The archway leads straight into the mosque, which has a split-level floor with a modern raised section at the north-western end replicating the original raised platform upon which Abdullah Quilliam was originally seated alongside an organ. To the right (north-east) of the entrance arch is another wider arch that again is a modern re-creation based upon one depicted in the late 19th-century photograph. The modern arches have shallower heads than the originals and also lack glazing in the upper parts that originally incorporated depictions of the star and crescent, the emblem of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century and now a symbol of Islam. The right arch leads into a top-lit ante room that contains an altered window in the original rear wall of the house, which was probably altered and enlarged when the mosque was built. Plaster decoration around the arches, which is also depicted in the late 19th-century photograph but had been lost, has also been reinstated. Originally there was a mehrab or niche located in the east corner of the mosque that indicated the direction of Mecca. However, there are no descriptions or photographs of its appearance. The corner is now occupied by an early 21st-century mehrab. The original roof structure with its exposed A-frame trusses and side purlins survives.

Upper Floors and Basement

On the first-floor landing is a blocked-up doorway that was inserted to provide access into the neighbouring late 19th- or early 20th-century building (former West Derby Union Offices). The stairwell is top-lit and rises higher to include the attic level, which is accessed via a separate timber winder stair on the second floor and has two rooms with internal windows onto the main stairwell. The second floor has been converted into student bedrooms and shower rooms, with further similar rooms and a kitchen and lounge in numbers 9 and 10. Many of the building's roof timbers are understood to have been replaced due to water damage caused by lead theft from the roof when the buildings were vacant.

The basement is interconnected with those of numbers 9 and 10 and is similarly laid out to the upper floors with a room to the front and rear. The front room is in the process of being converted into an ablution area. The rear room originally contained a printing press that formed the first Islamic publishing house in the UK, but no machinery survives.