Sloop Street Tenements

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SD1968 708-1/13/136

BARROW IN FURNESS Barrow Island SLOOP STREET(south side) Nos.1-13 (Consecutive) Sloop Street Tenements

GV II* Tenement block facing Ramsden Dock Road. 1881-84. By Paley and Austin of Lancaster (plan). Main contractors Smith and Caird of Dundee (Trescatheric). Red brick with graduated slate roofs. Four storeys, 3:23:3 bays; symmetrical. Slightly recessed centre has alternate paired and single windows and a group of single windows in middle; 4/2-pane sashes. Chamfered plinth.

Centre: ground floor windows have flush sills and triple-header segmental arches; first floor windows with projecting sills. Dichromatic band below second floor; from it rise a total of six pilaster strips; windows interrupt a moulded string course. String course and terracotta corbel table to cast-iron ogee gutter. Third floor treated as an attic storey with hipped-roof dormers within a mansard roof; plain ridge stacks on the party walls. End pavilions rise four full storeys, the upper floors set higher than the central block. Each has round-arched opening to central staircase; tripartite landing openings with iron balustrades and corbelled segmental arches. Paired windows to each side except the outer bay on ground floor which has shop window with segmental arch and dripmould; second floor windows cut a moulded string course; dichromatic band below third floor windows. Eaves as centre block but broken by canopy formed by catslide roof on four curved brackets; hipped roof with corbelled end stack.

Rear (facing Sloop Street): four full storeys throughout. Eleven staircases each with half-landing balconies and iron railings under round arch. Utility wings with casements in formerly unglazed openings; hipped roofs. Pavilion returns once featured a shop door flanked by segmentally-arched shop windows (now boarded up) under linked hoodmoulds. Modern ornamental trellis fencing and coloured paving stones feature in each forecourt/close at number 6-9 Sloop Street.

Part of outstanding tenement block development built to house workers of the Barrow Iron Shipbuilding Co. One of two identical blocks that flank a group of four simpler ranges set to rear of the sandstone Devonshire Buildings, Michaelson Road (qv) (see also Barque Street, Brig Street, Schooner Street, Ship Street and Steamer Street). Well-preserved example of a building type rare in England.

Listing NGR: SD1961468095