Warehouse at 42 Waring Street ('Cotton Court'), Belfast, BT1 2ED

Warehouse, Cotton Court, 42 Waring Street, Belfast

This is a large, four-storey gabled warehouse of pre-1830 construction — almost certainly dating from around 1800 or possibly earlier — making it a very early surviving example in Belfast of this form of timber construction. It is of considerable industrial archaeological interest. Only the original warehouse to the north side of the complex is listed.

The building sits on the north side of Waring Street, east of Hill Street and south of Gordon Street, and is now almost entirely hemmed in by later warehouse buildings — largely dating from the 1920s — with which it has been partly internally integrated. As a result, only a portion of the north elevation, the east gable, and a very small section of the west gable remain exposed. These exposed surfaces are rendered, though a large portion of the east gable retains its original brickwork. The bricks are noticeably small and brown rather than red in colour, which is a strong indicator of the building's considerable age. The gabled roof is slated, with a small skylight to the south side.

The north elevation, visible from yards belonging to properties fronting Gordon Street, is plain rendered. The ground floor and much of the first floor on this side are obscured by mid-20th-century neighbouring buildings, but the second and third floor levels are largely visible. There are relatively small flat-arched windows to each floor. Most of these windows have retained their sash frames with vertical glazing bars in a 2/2 configuration, but behind the frames most of the openings have been blocked.

The east gable is fully exposed. Its lower half is unrendered brick — the small, brown bricks noted above — while the upper half is finished in the same plain render as the north elevation. There is a blocked window at third-floor level matching those on the north elevation, and a smaller blocked opening at loft level. The gabled roof above is slated.

The surrounding later buildings, which are largely brick-built with slated hipped roofs and large segmental arch-headed windows (now all blocked), are marginally shorter than the original warehouse. Some demolitions have taken place. The west elevation of the surrounding complex, facing Hill Street, consists of a plain rendered three-to-four-storey hipped section with no openings, a plain rendered four-storey gabled projection, and a hipped roof section to the far right. The gabled projection appears to have been truncated. The section to the right of the gable — the west face of the hipped roof range — has blocked windows similar to the south elevation but is faced in glazed white brick rather than red, suggesting it once formed one side of a light well. The south elevation of the 1920s range is wholly plain red brick with a series of now-blocked segmental arch-headed windows. Remnants of formerly abutting buildings are still discernible on this elevation, including a tall, narrow outline near the centre that likely belonged to a return of a now-demolished structure, and to its immediate right the outline of a large gable.

Access to the complex from Waring Street is now through a plain early-to-mid-20th-century single-storey structure that follows the line of what was once Cotton Court, a lane that ran in a dog-leg northeastwards from Waring Street to Gordon Street, passing a large open yard on its west side. The warehouse originally stood to the north side of this yard and was entered from it. The Waring Street elevation of the single-storey entrance structure is rendered with a flat roof, a very large vehicle entrance with sturdy metal double doors, and a large square window facing the street. The west side of this section is now exposed following the demolition of an adjoining building, and is an unsightly mixture of brick and render typical of a wall uncovered by demolition.

The site sits within one of Belfast's oldest areas. Waring Street was largely developed in the 1670s and 1680s and is shown on maps from 1680 and 1685. By the later 18th century it had become the town's principal financial and commercial street, running from the Exchange at the Four Corners in the west to the Lime Kiln Dock at the river in the east. Serious development of the land to the north of Waring Street followed the large-scale granting of new leases by Lord Donegall in 1767. James Williamson's map of 1791 shows the area — formerly known as Buller's Field — already intersected by Foundry Lane (later Hill Street) and Buller's Row (later Gordon Street). Cotton Court does not appear on that map, though buildings behind the Waring Street frontage were very likely already present.

Cotton Court begins to appear in records from around 1807, when it was home to a small cotton mill — from which it took its name — owned by John Alexander Junior & Co. A building within the court was also used by a Methodist congregation in 1830. By the time of the valuation survey of 1837, the mill had gone; the court then contained the former preaching house and minister's office, a grain store, four modest dwelling houses, and a forge.

The original warehouse at the heart of the complex stands on the west side of what was Cotton Court. Physical evidence including the brickwork and roof trusses suggests an early 19th-century date, and the building appears to have been constructed as a complete structure. Its site is shown as occupied on the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1832, with an open yard to the south fronting Waring Street. The larger-scale Ordnance Survey town plans of 1858 show the same arrangement, and the 1860 valuation records that the yard and buildings — by then numbered 42 Waring Street — belonged to a George Ash and comprised a shop and stores.

The Ash family had a long prior association with Waring Street. In 1812, George Ash and his then business partner William Berwick obtained a lease of land on the south side of Gordon Street, bordering the site of the present warehouse. The same lease notes that Berwick and Ash already had concerns in Waring Street, and both are listed in a directory of 1824 as General Provision Merchants at No. 34. By 1832, Ash alone is listed as a wholesale grocer and general merchant at No. 36, and at No. 40 by 1839 — it is possible that the properties were renumbered at some point and that all these different numbers refer to the same premises. The 1837 valuation returns list his properties at this point as a single-storey office store, an office cooperage, and another adjoining building measuring 75½ feet by 33 feet and standing 33½ feet in height. This structure, described as office stores crossing a yard and including a counting room, matches the dimensions of the older warehouse, and a small hand-drawn plan in the margin of the valuation book confirms it stood on the site of the present block. The valuers themselves noted that this building was in their view fairly old — certainly over 20 years and perhaps considerably older. On this evidence the warehouse was standing in 1837 and was probably at least 30 years old at that point, suggesting it may have been built around 1800 or earlier.

The George Ash recorded in the 1860 valuation appears to have been the son of the George Ash of 1837, his father having died around 1854. George junior continued in business at No. 40 Waring Street until 1864. The site was subsequently used by William Moreland & Co., drysalters, tea and general merchants, and was listed as vacant in 1877. By 1883, following the renumbering of other properties on the street frontage, the address had become No. 42, and the site had been acquired by cement manufacturers N. McNaughton & Sons, in whose hands it remained until 1920. McNaughtons sublet part of the premises on the south side of the yard to a cork merchant named Kane between 1900 and 1909, and to one T. Bride, a painter, between 1910 and 1920. Throughout this period the plan of the site changed little, with the open yard to the south of the warehouse and the open entrance from Waring Street remaining in place. Cotton Court itself, which was described as in ruins by the later 1870s, was formally closed in 1880 and its northern end built over.

Around 1921 to 1922, No. 42 was acquired by wine and spirit dealers Holywood & Donnelly for use as a bonded warehouse. The new owners appear, on the evidence of the valuation notebooks, to have built the large four-storey brick range over the formerly open yard and constructed the single-storey entrance from Waring Street shortly after taking possession. They appear to have integrated the original warehouse with the new building at the same time. The small hipped-roof section to the west may also have been incorporated at this date, though this portion appears to predate the 1920s; map and valuation evidence suggests it is a remnant of a once larger neighbouring concern that may have dated from the mid-to-later 19th century. The site is shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1931 much as it appears today. The property passed to the Belfast Bonding Company in 1925 and continued in use as a bonded warehouse until 1991, by which time it was under the ownership of Edward Dillon Ltd.