Ship Street Tenement

BARROW IN FURNESS

SD1968 SHIP STREET, Barrow Island 708-1/13/135 (East side) Nos.1-9 (Consecutive) Ship Street Tenements

GV II

Tenement block. 1881-84. By Paley and Austin of Lancaster (plan). Main contractors Smith and Caird of Dundee (Trescatheric). Red brick with graduated slate roofs. 4 storeys, 2:14:2 bays; near symmetrical; slightly-recessed centre. Alternate paired and single windows; 4/2-pane sashes. Ground floor: chamfered plinth; windows have flush sills and triple-header segmental arches. 1st floor: similar but with projecting sills. Patterned brick band below 2nd floor of centre and 3rd floor of outer bays; 2nd-floor windows interrupt a moulded string course. 3rd floor of centre is treated as an attic storey with hipped-roof dormers within a mansard roof; end bays rise 4 full storeys and have hipped roofs. String course and terracotta corbel table to cast-iron ogee gutters. Projecting lateral stacks to each return; plain ridge stacks on the party walls. Rear (facing Ship Street): 4 full storeys to whole range. 9 staircases with half-landing balconies, iron railings and round arch over. Utility wings with casements in formerly unglazed apertures; hipped roofs. Part of outstanding tenement-block development built to house workers of the Barrow Iron Shipbuilding Co. One of 4 identical blocks set to rear of the sandstone Devonshire Buildings, Michaelson Road (qv); (see also Barque Street, Brig Street, Schooner Street). The site is flanked by more elaborate brick tenements that back onto Sloop Street and Steamer Street (qv). Well-preserved example of a building type rare in England. (Building Plans Register: 1881-: 1435; Trescatheric B: How Barrow was Built: Barrow in Furness: 1985-: 26-27).

Listing NGR: SD1958568178