Pillar Warehouse

The Pillar Warehouse, also known as the Pillar and Lucy Warehouses, is a pair of identical, semi-detached bonded warehouses situated on Merchants’ Road in Gloucester. They were probably built in 1838 by SW Dawkes of Gloucester, with the northern warehouse originally for Samuel Baker and the southern for the timber merchant JM Shipton. Both were leased to other merchants. The warehouses were restored and converted to a public house and restaurant in the late 20th century.

The warehouses are built of brick with stone sills to the window openings and feature cast-iron columns. They have a double, end-gabled slate roof with timber barge and eaves boards. The interior includes hollow cast-iron columns supporting timber floors, with beams believed to be 28 metres long.

The western end of the building has a colonnade of seven large cast-iron Doric columns supporting beams under the upper floors. Above this colonnade, centrally on each gable of the three upper floors, are loading doors with timber hoist canopies within the gable head, supported on brackets. To either side of these openings on each floor are windows. The ground floor of each warehouse has a leading door flanked by two windows. At basement level, each warehouse has a single central door. The east end has a twin-gabled wall with eight windows to each floor, four per warehouse, except on the ground floor, which has two doorways to the left, seemingly replacements for windows. Each gable has two windows, and a white painted panel inscribed in black letters "PILLAR AND LUCY HOUSE" is situated between the second and third-floor windows. One side wall has a full-height loading door, now filled with 20th-century windows and panels. To the left of the loading door are two windows on each floor, and to the right on the ground floor are four windows. At the right-hand end is the quay entrance flanked by the colonnade, with six windows on each of the upper floors. All windows are within brick segmental-arched heads, have projecting stone sills, and have been refitted with 20th-century side-hung sashes. The interior was not inspected.