Description

LANCASTER

SD4761NE CHURCH STREET
1685-1/7/76 (South side)
Nos.47-53 (Odd)
Cooperative Store

GV II

Cooperative store and hall, now shops. 1901, rebuilt as
department store behind retained facade in early 1980s. By
Austin and Paley. For the Lancaster and Skerton Equitable
Industrial Cooperative Society Ltd. Sandstone ashlar with
slate roofs. Deep L-shaped plan, extending along Church Street
and New Street and centred on a canted corner bay which
contains the entrance.
Free Northern Renaissance style. 2 storeys and many-gabled
attic, with 8 bays of varying width to Church Street and 9 to
New Street, articulated by strongly-projecting pilasters. The
doorway bay in the canted corner is the most ornate of the
whole composition: the doorway itself is round-headed and has
a surround decorated with strapwork. Above, a tall
semicircular oriel, dated 1901, with a 5-light square-headed
mullioned and transomed window, topped by a strapwork cresting
supporting a panel carved with a Lancashire rose. Behind and
above this is a cross-window between a pair of Ionic pilasters
whose entablature carries an ornate Ionic aedicule, which is
flanked by scrolls and capped by a segmental pediment, beneath
which is a cartouche containing the beehive symbol of the
Lancaster Cooperative Society.
The ground floor originally had windows but now has arcades,
whose moulded segmental arches with alternately projecting
voussoirs are carried on half-octagonal piers with banded
rustication; above is a shallow panelled frieze. The sixth bay
along New Street still contains the flat lintel of what was an
entrance to the Cooperative Hall, which is recognisable by its
wide 3-bay gable. The first-floor windows are arranged in
pairs in each structural bay and separated by shallow
pilasters.
The 2 bays to the left of the corner and the first 4 bays
along New Street have round-headed windows divided by a
mullion and 2 transoms; to the left the windows are
square-headed, while to the right they have round heads and no
subdivisions. Above them is a deep frieze decorated with
strapwork and a raised letter inscription naming the owner.
The second floor has a series of striking gables in a
picturesquely irregular composition, with cross windows under
segmental pediments towards the corner bay and, towards the
ends, taller wider mullioned and transomed windows under wide
Flemish gables.
The finest of several Cooperative shops, and other buildings
in the town, which Austin and Paley designed around 1900 in a
free Northern Renaissance idiom.

Listing NGR: SD4761361807

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26505301

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

• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings