40-44 Whitefriargate, Hull

Former Marks and Spencer department store, built in 1931 and designed by Norman Jones Sons and Rigby of Southport, with an extension added in 1938 by the same architects. The building has undergone further alterations in the mid-20th century and early 21st century. Until 2021, it functioned as a single department store. The architecture displays stripped neoclassical styling on the Whitefriargate frontage and Art Deco styling on the Alfred Gelder Street side.

The building is constructed with a red brick and steel frame with concrete floors. Cast Portland stone masonry cladding adorns the south elevation, which has a granite plinth. The north elevation features red brick with a granite plinth and stone dressings. Ground-floor shopfronts on the south front are bronze-framed and rise from granite plinths. Original 1930s steel Crittall windows are present throughout.

The building comprises a three-storey block aligned east-west fronting Whitefriargate, which steps down to a two-storey polygonal building extending to and facing Alfred Gelder Street, all beneath a flat roof.

The Whitefriargate (south) elevation displays the three-storey 1931 block, extended in 1938, clad in reconstituted cast Portland or "Empire" stone with a stripped neoclassical decorative scheme. The ground-floor shopfront features a long central showcase window and a smaller west-end window, both with grey-granite plinths. Decorative bronze-framed curved corner window panels with top ventilation grilles and slender mullions are present. Between the window showcases and to the west of the central showcase are recessed entrances supported on a steel fluted column set upon a granite base with late-20th-century floor tiles. The eastern entrance has three doors set in wooden architraves with long margin lights and a single blind overlight above. The west entrance has an off-set boarded division separating three similarly-styled doorways and a 1930s wooden two-leaf panelled staff entrance door with an overlight. At each end of the ground floor are granite pilasters supporting enriched brackets decorated with extended acanthus leaves and stylised square stops, surmounted by a moulded entablature with a rope border and fluted band. Above rises a two-storey seven-bay portico in antis with six giant fluted Doric columns and matching half-columns set within a moulded architrave with a panelled soffit. Narrow bays flank either side, each with a fluted second-storey string band. Each bay contains a large first-floor window and smaller second-floor window, all with moulded surrounds, projecting sills and margin-glazed metal-framed casement windows. The end bays have narrow windows, and the portico in antis features ironwork balconies to the first-floor windows with scrolled hand-rails and stylised fretwork. The upper floor is terminated by a decorative stepped parapet with a ship's prow at the centre and Viking ships at each end, resting upon a wave-form band.

To the west of numbers 40 to 43 Whitefriargate, the remaining half of a 19th-century brick building (formerly numbered 43 and 44 Whitefriargate) has been amalgamated into the structure. This is a three-storey two-bay building with a mid-1980s shopfront, stringcourses to each floor, semi-circular keystoned windows, and a plain entablature parapet with a decorated bracket. It has a blind right (east) return and rear.

The Alfred Gelder Street (north) elevation shows the 1938 two-storey block in red-brick cladding with Portland stone dressings in a pared-back Art Deco style. The ground-floor shopfront has stone-panelled pilasters (re-clad in the late 20th century) flanking a long five-light shop window, with corner window showcases to the left of recessed entrances. The window showcases feature granite plinths and bronze frames, and the recessed entrances have late-20th-century doorways with plain surrounds and tiled entrance floors. Each entrance has a single outer granite pilaster rising to support a plain bracket and entablature, with a moulded stone string band extending across the ground floor. The first floor contains seven bays of windows with decorative recessed brickwork forming quoins. The windows are tall and narrow, with brick pilaster jambs terminated by stone square stops, projecting stone sills, blind stone top-lights and Crittall glazing. To the west of these is a further three-bay blind range housing two lifts and a motor room. It has a stone-panelled plinth and horizontally-banded projecting brickwork to the ground floor, with decorative brickwork forming tall blind and framed panels on the second floor. A 1980s covered loading bay is attached to the east end of this range. The east and west returns are attached to neighbouring buildings facing Whitefriargate and Alfred Gelder Street.

The department store's concrete-capped flat roof has been altered and extended from Whitefriargate to Alfred Gelder Street. The rear (north) elevation of the Whitefriargate range's third storey, overlooking the main part of the roof, has brick-infilled concrete stanchions forming four bays with Crittall windows and an eastern late-20th-century metal-framed door. Access is provided by a late-20th-century caged ladder at the east end of the building.

The ground and first-floor shop floors, accessed from entrances on both Whitefriargate and Alfred Gelder Street, have been altered and modernised in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Some 1930s slender cast-iron columns remain in place, though most are now covered with cladding, with utilitarian suspended ceilings above. The Crittall windows facing both streets retain their fixings. Utility cupboards across the building retain early-20th-century Belfast sinks and some electric fittings.

The ground floor contains five 1930s brick and concrete stairs, separated from the ground-floor shop floor by later partitioning to allow separate commercial use. The public entrance stair and escalator, accessed from the eastern entrance on Whitefriargate, retain a brass handrail and cast-metal balustrade. In number 44 Whitefriargate, a 1980s stair rises from ground floor to roof, and a single-storey rear extension contains ancillary rooms.

The first floor has a smaller shop-floor area with staff quarters in the three-storey block to the south and partitioned facilities to the east. The first-floor staff quarters are accessed via a western staff stair from Whitefriargate and through number 44 Whitefriargate. They comprise office rooms overlooking Whitefriargate, accessed from a long east-west aligned corridor, retaining 20th-century doors and radiators. The eastern half is partitioned from the shop floor and contains toilets, store rooms, switchgear rooms, a heating chamber, a large stock room with concrete pillars and four north-facing slab-glass windows, and a control room with a Chubb and Sons safe. Two lifts occupy the north-east corner.

The second floor contains further staff quarters, again accessed from a western stair and through number 44 Whitefriargate, connected by an off-set east-west aligned corridor with a 1970s telephone booth. The north side of the corridor has toilets, a utility cupboard with a Belfast sink, and two small and one large room (formerly a hairdressing room, medical room and changing room). The south side provides access to a former cloakroom, kitchen and dining area (separated by a partial partition), and two southern rooms (formerly a manager's dining room and training room). The rooms retain a range of mid-20th to late-20th-century fittings and fixtures, including architraves, doors and air-conditioning grilles.