A Bond Tobacco Warehouse

A bonded tobacco warehouse built in 1905, designed by the Docks Committee engineer and constructed by William Cowlin and Sons. The warehouse is located on Cumberland Road, Floating Harbour, Bristol. The exterior is faced with patent red bricks, blue engineering bricks, Pennant stone steps, terracotta details, and a Welsh slate roof. 'A' Bond has a steel frame on the lower two floors and iron on the rest, supporting rolled steel joists to segmental-arched concrete floor slabs. It comprises two equal parts separated by a central spine wall and has nine storeys and an 18-window range. The ground floor is in black brick with a low plinth, and the remainder is in red brick with horizontal strings at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th storeys. There is a cornice of black moulded brick and a stone parapet with sunken panels. Wide clasping pilasters extend to the parapet; the rear elevation has a central bay between the pilasters. The ground floor front has round-arched doorways and windows, arranged as one door, two windows, and two doors on either side of a central door and flanking windows within a projecting block, with Pennant stone steps leading up. The paired flanking doorways are sheltered by a cantilevered steel canopy with sliding steel doors. Upper-floor windows are nearly square, featuring terracotta cills, pronounced chamfered keys, and stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops; they are arranged as a 1:2:1 ratio in the central bay and equally spaced between the pilasters. The top floor is roof-lit only. Inside, a central entrance lobby leads to a lateral staircase, providing access to a 10x8 bay floor with a central lift shaft on each side. Columns decrease in size to the upper floors, supporting deep primary and secondary beams with haunched connections; some floors have wood block flooring. The warehouse features north light roofs supported by steel trusses. 'A' Bond was the first of three brick bonded warehouses in the Cumberland Basin.