31 Square Road

Wool warehouses, built in 1864 by architect John Hogg for Isaac Cooper and John Crossley.

The building is constructed of buff sandstone on a brick inner leaf with a slate roof, and is triangular in plan. It occupies a prominent position in the angle formed by Church Street and Square Road, with its north wall running east-west between the two streets.

The principal front faces south-west onto Square Road. It comprises six regular bays arranged over two storeys plus a basement and an unlit attic. The walls are of regularly-coursed, rock-faced stone with a projecting plinth. Flat plat bands run at the sills and shoulders of the first-floor windows and along the cornice, with a moulded band at the ground-floor window shoulders. The eaves are finished with three courses of brown brick and gutter corbels; the elaborate stone cornice of the south wall makes a short return to the right. The front makes an angle with the south wall, while at the left it has a slightly-recessed, rounded junction with the north wall. The basement lintels are flat and rock-faced with dressed margins. Ground-floor windows have deep sills with raised fields and shouldered, pointed lintels with keystones and billet-moulded segmental arches. First-floor lintels are similar but unmoulded. The entrance in the fifth bay from the left features a grand classical doorcase with consoled cornice, billet-moulded jambs, Corinthian columns flanking the doorway with foliage in the spandrels, and a Greek-head keystone with dentillation above. The modern door has a plain semi-circular fanlight. The roof is hipped to the left with hip-tiles, a short central flat section (covered with flashband as of 2018), a short sloping tiled ridge to the right, and a tiled hip with chimney stack. Three modern rooflights have been added.

The left (north) return is plainer, with dressed walling and ashlar sills and lintels (rock-faced to the basement). This wall comprises eight bays over two storeys plus basement, with an attic hoist and loading slot in the sixth bay. The hoist is partially built of brown bricks, which also form the corbelled eaves to the right; to the left are stone corbels. At the far left, a short return of the consoled cornice from Church Street is visible. A loading slot in the third bay is partially infilled at ground floor with a standard window at first floor; this and adjacent windows lack lintels, and the sill band that runs across the rest of the wall is also absent here. A flight of steps with splayed wing walls serves the ground-floor door below the hoist, with curved stone steps returning beneath to the basement door. Some windows have external wooden louvres. The roof is hipped to either side with tiles and has a central flat section. Two modern rooflights are present.

The south-east wall facing Church Street comprises six regular bays with window and band detailing matching the Square Road front but with a deep, consoled eaves cornice. The junction to the right is rounded with detailing continuing across it. The basement entrance at ground level in the second bay has a stone doorcase with cornice, keystone and decorated spandrels, though it is now infilled with a wooden security door. A further entrance has been inserted between the fifth and sixth bays, and modern air-handling equipment, satellite dishes and canopies have been affixed. The roof mirrors the Square Road roof but is not visible from ground level.

A short south wall, one bay wide, returns to the left, comprising two storeys plus basement at ground level. The bands and cornice from Church Street return across this wall, and at the eaves is a shouldered stone chimney stack with three pots. Each floor has a two-light mullioned window with details matching those on the Square Road and Church Street elevations.

The interior contains modern stairs rising at the south and north ends of the western warehouse. At second-floor level, the rafters and first purlin are exposed and are all mechanically sawn, seated in cast-iron brackets bolted to the floor and rising to the eaves. Cast-iron columns, timber beams, floors and the unplastered brick inner skin are occasionally visible, usually behind late-20th-century finishes and stud construction which also lines the corridor along the dividing wall. At ground floor, more columns are exposed and a decorative spiral stair provides access to the basement. Throughout the ground floor and basement are modern kitchen and bar fittings, large openings have been made through the dividing wall, and modern decorative coloured glass has been fitted in some ground-floor windows.