Devonshire Buildings Island Road Mission The Devonshire Public House

Tenement block including mission and public house, Barrow Island. Built 1872-74 by the Lancaster architects Paley and Austin (plans), with main contractors Smith and Caird of Dundee (Trescatheric). Constructed in sawn ashlar red sandstone with graduated slate roof and brick stacks.

The building comprises three storeys and an attic, arranged in a complex composition of 3:15:5:15:4 bays with a four-storey octagonal corner tower on the left and an angled corner bay on the far right. The end pavilions and centre section rise taller than the intervening sections. The main body features recessed fifteen-bay sections in a repeated 2:1:2 rhythm, divided by buttressed party walls in a near-symmetrical arrangement.

A rock-faced plinth rises to a chamfered sill band, with sill bands marking the upper floors. Four-pane sashes predominate throughout. The end pavilions and centre feature two-light mullioned windows with shouldered lights and relieving arches to the ground floor, square-headed lights with round-arched hoodmoulds to the first floor, and round-arched lights with coupled hoodmoulds to the second floor. Within the fifteen-bay sections, all second-floor windows have shouldered lights. The single projecting bays contain two-light mullioned windows and rise as full dormers with shouldered-light windows beneath relieving arches, hoodmoulds and coped gables. A string course and terracotta corbel table run to the eaves of the mansard roof with hipped-roof dormers. The buttresses rise to coped party-wall parapets, topped by multiple-flue brick ridge stacks.

The octagonal corner tower on the left contains a door to Michaelson Road with a round arch and triangular hoodmould, and round-arched windows to the upper floors, surmounted by a short spire with lucarnes and finial. At the base of the tower are broad segmentally-arched shop openings with hoodmoulds, now forming the Island Road Mission.

The right pavilion, The Devonshire Public House, has been cement-rendered. Its corner bay projects corbelled at each floor and terminates in a hipped-roof garret.

The rear of the building features pavilions with angled staircase recesses containing wrought-iron railings to landings set on corbels or segmental arches, with round arches at the top beneath hipped-roof canopies on large brackets. The centre staircase is similar but with canted balconies. The fifteen-bay sections rise four full storeys, their staircases positioned lower with curved braces to the canopy brackets. All rear roof dormers match the front elevation.

This was the first block of tenements to be built on Barrow Island, predated in Barrow-in-Furness only by the Scotch Flats at Hindpool (circa 1871; now demolished). Building plans include a front elevation dated January 1872; drawings of September 1874 for the adjacent Devonshire Buildings (Nos 10-14) note that the details are "same as the buildings now in course of completion".

The use of the Scottish tenement system in Barrow reflects the influx of Scottish labour at this time, drawn to work for the Barrow Iron Shipbuilding Company under its first manager, Robert Duncan of Glasgow. The tower complements that of Devonshire Buildings (Nos 10-14); together, the two ranges form an extremely impressive, rare and early complex of superior industrial housing, testifying to the versatility of this important architectural partnership. Six further blocks of tenements are set to the rear on Barque Street, Brig Street, Schooner Street, Ship Street, Sloop Street and Steamer Street.