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

Warehouse at 42 Waring Street, Belfast

This is a large four-storey gabled warehouse of pre-1830 construction, now largely concealed by surrounding 1920s warehouse buildings. The original warehouse is sandwiched between and partly internally integrated with these later structures, leaving only portions of the north elevation, the east gable, and a small section of the west gable exposed to view.

The exposed sections of the original warehouse are rendered, though a substantial part of the east gable retains its original brickwork. The bricks are noticeably small and brown in colour, indicating considerable age. The gabled roof is slated and features a small skylight on the south side. The north elevation is plain rendered with a series of relatively small flat arch windows to each floor. Most windows retain their original sash frames with vertical glazing bars in a 2/2 configuration, though the majority of openings behind these frames have been blocked. The ground floor and much of the first floor are obscured by adjoining mid-twentieth-century buildings, but the second and third floor levels remain visible from yards belonging to properties fronting Gordon Street.

The east gable is wholly exposed. The lower half shows the original brick construction unrendered; the upper half is finished in render matching the north elevation. There is a blocked window to the third floor and a small blocked window to the loft level. Where the gable merges with the east elevation of the hipped roof range to the south, the later structure appears in brick without openings.

The original warehouse was formerly accessed from a lane to the north side of Waring Street, originally known as Cotton Court. This lane ran in dog-leg fashion north-eastwards to Gordon Street, passing a large open yard to its west side where the warehouse stood. Cotton Court was closed in the 1880s and built over between that date and the 1920s. The lane entrance is now covered by a plain early to mid-twentieth-century single-storey building that follows the line of the former lane northwards. This structure has a rendered Waring Street elevation with a flat roof, featuring a large vehicle entrance with sturdy metal double doors and a large square window. The west side of this structure is exposed following demolition of an adjacent building, revealing an unsightly mixture of brick and render typical of walls exposed after demolition.

The adjoining 1920s warehouse range to the south consists of four storeys in brick with hipped slated roofs. These are marginally shorter than the original warehouse. Originally obscured behind related office buildings, the range was constructed as a utilitarian industrial building. The south elevation is plain functional red brick with a series of now-blocked segmental arch-headed windows. Remnants of buildings which once abutted this range remain discernible on this elevation, notably a tall narrow outline near the centre and the outline of a large gable to its right. The west elevation (facing Hill Street) comprises a plain rendered three to four-storey hipped section without openings, a plain rendered four-storey gabled projection, and a hipped roof section to the far right. The hipped and gabled sections probably originally belonged to pre-dating properties that faced Hill Street; the gable appears to have been truncated. The section to the right of the gable is the west face of the hipped roof range, featuring blocked windows faced in glazed white brick rather than red, suggesting it once formed the side of a light well.