Description

MANCHESTER

SJ8498SE DALE STREET
698-1/29/87 (East side)
Nos.53 AND 55
Langley Buildings

GV II

Includes: No.36 HILTON STREET.
Home trade and mail-order warehouse and newspaper printing
office, now mail-order warehouses. 1908, for J.D.Williams &
Co. Steel columns and girders, concrete floors, with cladding
of brown and red faience and red brick, slate roof with
skylights. Long narrow rectangular plan filling plot bounded
on other sides by China Lane, Back China Lane, and Hilton
Street, with entrance blocks at both ends and warehousing
between. Baroque style. Basement, 2+3 storeys and attic, with
3-bay facade. Very ornate treatment includes channelled
rustication in brown faience at the lower level, a moulded
cornice to 1st floor arched over a curved oriel in the centre,
giant composite pilasters to the upper level with a decorated
cornice and a semi-circular pediment over the centre; splayed
corner doorways under 3-sided 1st-floor oriels; a central
round-headed arch to the 2nd and 3rd floors containing 3-light
sashed windows and a panel between them with a banner lettered
"LANGLEY BUILDINGS", and in the flanking bays round-arched
3-light windows at 2nd floor and 2-light windows on the floors
above, all with pilastered surrounds and those at the top
floor round-headed with keystones. Chimney to left of
pediment; mansard roof. The left side wall of this block has,
inter alia, staggered stairwindows. The rear facade (36 Hilton
Street), mostly brick with some brown faience, is 4 narrow
bays, in similar but much simpler style, including giant
pilasters, coupled doorways in the centre with faience
surrounds and spanned by a Diocletian window with a similar
surround which runs out over elliptical-headed windows in the
flanking bays, the keystones of these forming brackets to
curved 3-light oriels in the same material; staggered
stairwindows in the 2 centre bays with stained glass in
Venetian-style joinery; and a semicircular pediment over the
centre bays. The side walls of the intermediate warehouse
range are 15 bays with brick pilasters and iron-mullion
tripartite sashed windows. INTERIOR: tiled entrance lobby and
doors with Art Nouveau handles; tiled open-well staircases at
both ends (that in the front block mounting round a lift),
both with cast-iron tuning-fork balusters containing
wrought-iron foliation in Art Nouveau style; stained glass
incorporating red dragon of Wales. HISTORY: occupied in 1913
by J.D.Williams & Co and by Daily News Printing Office.

Listing NGR: SJ8469198254

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26492217

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)