Warehouse

Fireproof warehouse, circa 1842-44, built in mellow red brick with a cast-iron frame. The building rises six storeys plus basement and is topped with a pitched wrought-iron roof structure covered in slate.

The exterior displays Flemish Bond to the front and left side elevations, with English Garden Wall Bond (irregular) applied to the rear and right side. The front elevation facing Waterloo Road has three bays and features a pedimented gable with scrolled stops, a shallow arched and keyed alcove to the centre of the tympanum, and a deep horizontal dentil eaves cornice. The ground floor openings have been altered and late twentieth-century roller shutters inserted, though original stone entrance steps to the central and left bays remain. The upper floors retain original barred segmental-headed windows (those to the top floor are slightly shorter), with original recessed glazing in places (some damaged). These windows are framed by segmental arched cast-iron lintels with slightly projecting cast-iron keystones, cast-iron sills, and curved brick sides to the window surrounds.

The left elevation, fronting Vulcan Street, extends across nine bays. A loading bay is set within a full-height recess at bay 2, with a raised shallow gabled head with scrolled kneelers forming a jigger loft. Tiered sheet-iron loading doors survive, including those to the basement (now hidden beneath a later external stair flight). Bay 1 contains a stair bay with a doorway to the raised ground floor set within an arched brick surround incorporating a moulded console-shaped keystone; the original sheet-iron door and semi-circular cast-iron head survive underneath a late twentieth-century roller shutter. Windows match those on the front elevation. Two windows to the raised ground floor have been altered and converted into loading doors. The right and rear elevations are blind.

The interior contains brick-vaulted ceilings supported by cast-iron columns, beams and tie rods. Windows are recessed with chamfered sides. Original tile floors survive to the lower floors (some now hidden under later removable raised floors), with tiles stamped with the maker's name 'W Hancock & Co Manufactrs Hawarden'. Large open-plan warehouse spaces extend across the basement, fourth and fifth floors. Partition walls and suspended ceilings have been inserted to the remaining floors, though original fabric survives behind them. Sheet-iron doors and window shutters remain, with some removed and in storage. An enclosed spiral stone stair rises at the rear left corner of the building, with sheet-iron doors set within cast-iron frames at every floor level. Mid-to-late twentieth-century timber stairs and late twentieth to early twenty-first century dog-leg stairs have been added. The wrought-iron roof trusses support slate directly on iron batons connected to the trusses with no fixings. An iron mezzanine jigger loft occupies the east end of the top floor, supported by slender cast-iron columns containing hoist machinery, and is accessed by a cast-iron stair rising from the fifth-floor landing. A lower basement extends beneath the front of the building, accessed by a sliding sheet-iron door from the main basement.

This warehouse was constructed in the early-to-mid 1840s, probably shortly after the Formby Street fire of 1842, which prompted an increase in fireproof warehouse construction in Liverpool, and shortly before the construction of the fireproof Clarence Warehouses of 1844. Early Building Acts had introduced structural requirements intended to reduce collapse risk in fire, including the use of cast-iron columns, enclosed stair bays, and timbers of specified thickness, though unlike in textile mills these provisions were not enforced in warehouses and many continued to be built with limited or no such features throughout the nineteenth century.

Historic maps show the building was divided into three units in the 1850s—two small units to the front (probably ground floor) and one larger unit to the rear—which by 1891 had been reconfigured as two units with the two front units merged. Gore's and Kelly's directories from the late 1850s to the late 1920s record use by merchants and ship-owners, passenger brokers, emigration agents, distillers, wine and spirit brokers, and removal carriers, with chambers and offices occupying the front portion (possibly ground floor only) and upper floors and rear used for warehousing. In the mid-to-late twentieth century the property was adapted as a furniture warehouse and in 1984 was partly converted for use as music studios.