B Bond Tobacco Warehouse

B Bond Tobacco Warehouse is a bonded tobacco warehouse built in 1908. It was designed by the Docks Committee engineer and constructed by William Cowlin and Sons. The building features a Coignet system of reinforced concrete, patent red bricks, blue engineering bricks, Pennant stone steps, terracotta details, and a Welsh slate roof. It has an open plan layout divided into two equal parts by a central spine wall and stands nine storeys tall with an 18-window range.

The ground floor is made of black brick with a low plinth, while the upper floors are in red brick, featuring string courses at the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth storeys, a cornice of black moulded brick, and a stone parapet. The corners have wide clasping pilasters, and the central four-window bay projects above the parapet with sunken panels. The rear elevation includes a central bay that is flat between the pilasters.

The ground-floor front has round-arched doorways and windows, with one door, two windows, and two doors on either side of a central door and flanking windows in the projecting block, accessed by Pennant stone steps. The paired flanking doorways are sheltered by a cantilevered steel canopy and feature sliding steel doors. The upper-floor windows are almost square, with terracotta cills, pronounced chamfered keys, and chamfered stopped jambs, arranged in a 1:2:1 pattern in the central bay and evenly spaced on either side of the unpierced pilasters. The top floor is only roof-lit.

Inside, the entire structure is made of reinforced concrete. There is a central entrance lobby leading to a lateral staircase, providing access to a 10x8-bay floor with a central lift shaft. The columns decrease in size on the upper floors, supporting deep primary and secondary beams with haunched connections, and some levels feature wood block flooring. The roof is supported by steel trusses and north light roofs.

Historically, the B Bond Tobacco Warehouse was the first significant structure in England to utilize Edmond Coignet's reinforced concrete system.