127, 129 AND 131, DUKE STREET

127, 129, and 131 Duke Street are shops with offices above, built around 1873 by the architectural firm Paley and Austin. The building features red brick with ashlar sandstone dressings and a graduated slate roof. It stands three storeys high with an attic and has four bays, arranged in groups of 3:2:2:3 windows on the first floor. The design is symmetrical, positioned on an obtuse-angled corner site facing Ramsden Square and Abbey Road.

Each end of the building has a doorway, with one office front and three shop fronts situated between channel-rusticated ashlar pilasters that have carved capitals. The first floor includes a full-width balcony with a decorative iron balustrade and brick pilasters between the bays. The round-headed plain sashes are complemented by central openings in the outer bays that feature glazed doorways. An impost string course supports the archivolts, which have carved keystones.

On the second floor, there is a continuous moulded sill band connecting groups of 4:2:2:4 sashes, linked by an impost string course. Semi-octagonal columns are applied to the brick mullions, with wider brick king mullions in the outer bays. Ashlar panels are located beneath raised segmental archivolts with carved keystones. A string course and corbel table run beneath the eaves cornice, and the pierced parapet has ashlar dies over each bay division. The parapet is interrupted by square-headed dormers featuring brackets and triangular pediments with ball finials; each outer bay has two dormers, while the third bay has a smaller pediment raised over a sunken panel.

The building has a mansard roof with a coped parapet on the right gable and two brick ridge stacks, the left one being taller and decorated. The original plans for the building are dated 1873 and it forms part of a planned scheme around Ramsden Square, which is the focal point of Barrow in Furness town centre.