26-30, HANOVER STREET L1

Nos. 26-30 Hanover Street consists of a pair of warehouses built in the early 19th century, with later alterations from the 20th century. The buildings are constructed of red and brown brick laid in Flemish bond. The upper section of the right-hand warehouse has been rendered and painted, featuring coped gablets and valley parapet walls, with a slate roof covering.

The paired structures are arranged with gables facing the street frontage, with the ridges of the twin ranges running perpendicular to the street.

The south-west front elevation presents two matched frontages, each five bays wide and five storeys tall above a basement. The central bays of each warehouse feature tall semi-circular arch-headed openings containing tiered double loading doorways fitted with plank double doors. Timber loading beams serve as lintels to the openings below. Above the arch heads are gabled canopies sheltering hoist beams.

The left-hand warehouse has a flat-headed ground floor doorway providing access to an internal stair, lit by small circular openings with projecting cills at each floor level. Flanking the central loading bay are stacked two-light windows with shallow-arched heads. To the left of the central bay are a ground floor doorway and a taller ground floor window.

The right-hand warehouse is accessed by a semi-circular headed doorway on its left side, with a single oval opening above and two-light windows to each floor. Further right is a taller doorway and a widened ground floor opening with loading doors above. A wide semi-circular arch-headed doorway with radiating fanlight stands to the right of the loading bay, with a tall barred ground floor window in the rightmost bay. Two-light windows, some barred, occupy the upper floors.

The rear elevation repeats the asymmetrical gabled form of the front, with two-light windows to each floor and a fourth-floor doorway with a simple timber hoist beam above.

Internally, wooden storage floors are supported on substantial floor beams and timber posts. The tall ground floor, now fire-damaged, was originally fitted with seven transverse beams carried on two rows of slender cast-iron columns. This area retains fragments of plaster cornice work from the original ceiling. The basement storey contains two rows of cast-iron columns with flanged heads supporting transverse floor beams. The first and second floors have two rows of timber posts, whilst the third floor has fewer beams. The roof structure is formed from queen post trusses supporting collar beams with superimposed king posts. These carry three ranks of trenched purlins and ridge purlins.

The warehouses appear on Horwood's map of Liverpool from 1803 and form the most complete surviving examples of buildings associated with Liverpool's earliest phase of development as a major port, centred on Steers Dock, developed in the 18th century. Around this dock, the street pattern of the Lower Hanover Street and Paradise Street areas developed. Merchant houses with attached warehouses were originally built on these street frontages, later to be replaced by or converted to warehousing as the merchant class relocated to areas further from the dock.

Nos. 26-30 form part of a notable group of contemporary structures, alongside No. 24 Hanover Street and Nos. 1 and 3 Duke Street. This pair of early 19th-century warehouses represents the most significant surviving group of buildings located close to the site of the city's first enclosed dock, and they are associated with the early phase of Liverpool's development as a seaport of international significance. Their architectural form and prominent siting give them considerable townscape significance within the historic port landscape of which they form part.