Warehouse

Warehouse. Built in the early 19th century, with minor alterations in the late 20th century. The warehouse is constructed of red brick laid in a Flemish bond pattern, topped with a shallow-pitch roof covered in concrete tiles.

The front elevation features a gabled design, rising five storeys above a basement. It has double loading doorways with large timber lintels and landing beams across the centre of each floor, with doors set flush to the building’s frontage. A projecting hoist beam is set within a gabled canopy at the apex of the gable. Flanking the doorways are two-light windows with shallow segmental arched heads, some now containing late 20th-century plastic window frames. The basement and ground floor openings are blocked, the former having stone wedge lintels. A doorway on the right side of the ground floor has a semi-circular arched head and is approached by three stone steps.

The side elevations have a render coat, and incorporate some 20th-century openings to the left side. The rear gable has pairs of two-light windows on each floor.

Inside, strutted king-post trusses sit on massive tie beams, supporting double side purlins and a square-set ridge purlin. The truss closest to the front has been modified with removal of the king post to accommodate a steel hoist beam. The hoist loft contains a metal hoist cradle, windlass and a grooved drive wheel, originally powered by a Clayton electric motor. The storage floors have massive square section cross beams, each supported by a central post with roughly-shaped bearers between the post head and the beam soffit. The beams near the loading doorways have twin supports on either side of the openings. A hearth is located on the left side wall of the basement.

The warehouse is located near the site of the world’s first enclosed dock, in the area of Liverpool first developed for commercial purposes related to the port. The street layout was fully established by 1810. The development of warehouses as specialist buildings is notably significant in this part of Liverpool, a 19th-century port of international importance. These warehouses are among the most important surviving examples nationally, reflecting developments from the late 18th to the early 20th century.