Numbers 10-14 Devonshire Buildings

Numbers 10-14 Devonshire Buildings is a tenement block built around 1875 by Paley and Austin of Lancaster, with Smith and Caird of Dundee acting as main contractors. The building is constructed of sawn, red ashlar sandstone with a graduated slate roof and brick stacks. It is three and four storeys high with attics, arranged with a 3:15:3 bay front, featuring a five-storey corner tower on the right and an angled corner bay on the left. The end pavilions are taller, and a recessed centre creates a repeating rhythm.

The near-symmetrical design includes a rock-faced plinth that rises to a chamfered sill band, with additional sill bands to the upper floors. Most windows are 4-pane sashes. The end pavilions have 2-light mullioned windows with shouldered lights and relieving arches on the ground floor, and round-arched windows with coupled hoodmoulds on the third floor. A string course and terracotta corbel table sits below the eaves of the mansard roof, which is punctuated by hipped-roof dormers.

The central section of the building features 2nd-floor windows with shouldered lights. The single bays project, with 2-light mullioned windows rising as dormers featuring shouldered-light windows under relieving arches, hoodmoulds, and coped gables. The buttresses rise to coped party-wall parapets, with multiple-flue brick ridge stacks.

The corner tower on the right is octagonal, containing a door to Michaelson Road and round-arched windows to the upper floors, topped by a short spire with a finial. The angled corner bay on the left is corbelled out at each floor and culminates in a square garret with a single sash window and a hipped roof.

The rear of the building consists of angled staircase recesses with wrought-iron railings to landings, which are set on corbels or segmental arches. Round arches under hipped-roof canopies on large brackets are also present. The central rear section rises four full storeys and features a similar staircase with canted balconies.

This building represents the second block of tenements constructed on Barrow Island, following Devonshire Buildings. Surviving drawings are dated September 1874. The tower complements that of Devonshire Buildings, and the two ranges together form an impressive and early complex of superior industrial housing, showcasing the versatility of the architectural partnership of Paley and Austin.