Quebec Wharf

Quebec Wharf is a former granary with attached boiler and engine house, office and dwelling house, built in 1878 for the North Metropolitan Tramways Company as a forage warehouse for its horses. It is located at Kingsland Basin on the canal. The building was later used briefly as a spice warehouse in the later 20th century.

The main granary is constructed of stock brick with red brick dressings and a slate roof. It rises to four and a half storeys on its western side adjoining the canal, with three storeys behind. The west front features six windows in cambered openings with rubbed brick voussoirs, mostly pivoting metal casements with many rosette bosses at the glazing bar intersections. One bay contains a lucam for hoisting sacks that rises the full height of the building above ground floor level, clad in bituminous painted corrugated iron on an iron frame. At ground level on the wharf are two doorways with blue brick nosings designed for taking bales of hay or straw, and a narrower doorway for coal. Rusticated brick quoins articulate the corners. The north front has three third-floor ventilation openings with fancy cast iron filigree grilles and sliding shutters. The landward side features similar windows (some replacements), loading doors at second-floor level, and shuttered ground-floor openings behind cast iron columns with a cast iron walkway at first-floor level.

For fire protection, the interior was divided into four sections by substantial brick crosswalls, mostly fitted with rolling double iron doors. The floors are predominantly timber with flitched beams incorporating rolled wrought iron I-sections upon cast iron circular columns, representing a relatively early use of I-sections. The staircase top storey retains its original wooden construction. The western roof side features an elaborate queenpost type wooden roof, with the lucam containing an original hoist mounted in a substantial wooden frame. The eastern side has metal trusses of king-rod configuration, predominantly wrought iron though some have been replaced in steel.

The boiler room and engine house is attached to the eastern side as a single-storey building that provided power for milling equipment and hoisting machinery. It is built of stock brick with a gable end, one cambered casement, and double doors. The timber roof includes tall ventilated and glazed lanterns running along the ridge.

The attached office building fronts onto the boiler room and engine house with a gable front. It comprises two storeys with one 16-pane sash window. The interior retains matchboard panelling and a cast iron firegrate.

The dwelling house is attached to the office by wall and fronts Kingsland Road. It rises two storeys above a cart entrance. Two cambered sash windows with horns and vertical glazing bars face forward. The front is distinguished by Doric piers and a stone cornice to the cart entrance, with the gable decorated with red brick stepped patterning and rubbed brick voussoirs interrupted by stone keystones and corner stones.

This is the best remaining example in south-east England of a canal-side granary, probably the most distinctive relic of the 19th-century horse tramway system of London, and one of the few surviving buildings associated with canal wharfage in London.