Ship Street Tenement

The Ship Street Tenement is a four-storey tenement block built between 1881 and 1884 by the architectural firm Paley and Austin of Lancaster, with main contracting by Smith and Caird of Dundee. Constructed from red brick and topped with graduated slate roofs, the building features a near-symmetrical façade with two sets of paired windows and single windows, all fitted with 4/2-pane sashes. The ground floor has a chamfered plinth, with windows that have flush sills and triple-header segmental arches. The first floor mirrors this design but includes projecting sills. A patterned brick band runs below the second floor in the center and the third floor in the outer bays, while the second-floor windows disrupt a moulded string course. The central third floor is designed as an attic storey, featuring hipped-roof dormers within a mansard roof, while the end bays rise to four full storeys and have hipped roofs. The building is adorned with a string course and a terracotta corbel table supporting cast-iron ogee gutters. Each return has projecting lateral stacks, and plain ridge stacks are located on the party walls. The rear of the building, facing Ship Street, consists of four full storeys across the entire range and includes nine staircases with half-landing balconies, iron railings, and round arches above. Utility wings are fitted with casements in previously unglazed apertures and have hipped roofs. This tenement is part of a significant development intended to house workers from the Barrow Iron Shipbuilding Company and is one of four identical blocks located behind the sandstone Devonshire Buildings on Michaelson Road. It stands alongside more elaborate brick tenements that back onto Sloop Street and Steamer Street. The Ship Street Tenement is a well-preserved example of a building type that is rare in England.