Conservancy Buildings, Kingston upon Hull, City of Kingston upon Hull

Summary

Post Office, then offices. 1843 by the architect William Foale with an 1847 extension by Foale. Remodelled around 1877 for the Humber Conservancy Commissioners, and remodelled around 1908 for the Humber Conservancy Board.

Description

MATERIALS: ashlar stonework now painted white and resembling stucco, orange brick with ashlar dressings, slate roofs, brick stacks.

PLAN: the building stands to the rear of a narrow, rectangular courtyard located behind buildings fronting the south side of Whitefriargate and reached through a wide passageway at the west end of number 9 Whitefriargate. The rear of the building abuts a range of Trinity House at the west end and overlooks an inner courtyard of that complex.

The front (north) side of the building has two six-bay ranges; the east brick range is of two storeys with an entrance doorway at the west end opening into an entrance hall with a staircase rising against the cross wall; the west, white-painted range is of a single storey, also with a doorway at the west end, opening into a north-south corridor, with two offices and a large board room (originally the site of the letter office). The rear (south) side is two-storeyed with a large, single-storey room at the east end (originally part of the pay room). A second staircase rises against the rear wall of the single-storey, front range.

EXTERIOR: the front elevation of the single-storey west range (the original letter office) is painted ashlar. It has a plinth with a recessed, two-bay centre rising above the two-bay side wings and topped by a triangular pediment. The flanking side wings have entablatures with dentil cornices and parapets. The centre has two two-light, round-headed windows set in raised frames with cornices. Above is a relief royal coat of arms flanked by relief laurel wreaths. The left-hand wing has a pair of round-headed windows with pilasters, moulded arch frames and giant keystones. The right-hand wing has a similar, round-headed window with pilasters, moulded arch frame and giant keystone with a similar, but wider, round-headed arch in the sixth bay with a boarded doorway (formerly a fielded six-panel door and overlight in 1994), with a plain fanlight. The windows have unhorned sash frames, with the exception of the fifth-bay window, which has a horned sash frame. The two windows in the left-hand wing and the two-light, left window in the centre have leaded and stained glass windows. Behind the parapets and pediment from the left is a hipped, slate roof with a raised roof lantern, a second, parallel hipped, slate roof with two brick stacks on its east side, and a narrow, lean-to slate roof over the north-south corridor.

The front elevation of the two-storey east range is orange brick in English bond with an ashlar plinth and ashlar entablature and parapet. The first floor has six large, rectangular windows with stone sills and gauged brick lintels. The windows have eight-over-eight pane unhorned sashes. The ground floor has similar windows in four bays. The fifth and sixth bays have a slightly projecting doorcase. It has a painted ashlar plinth and moulded cornice, with banded, ashlar painted white to impost level and banded, lighter orange brickwork above. The wide, round-headed doorway has a concave ashlar frame with stepped voussoirs and a keystone. It has double doors each of three fielded panels, with a plain fanlight. Behind the building parapet is a hipped slate roof with brick stacks to the centre of the ridge and east, side wall.

INTERIOR: the west front range has a large board room with a parquet floor and a deeply coved and panelled ceiling with a rectangular, raised roof lantern. The roof lantern has a foliate frieze and moulded cornice above which are square glazing panels separated by pilasters with a moulded cornice and two enriched roses to the plaster ceiling. The walls have deep skirting boards with a panelled dado and large, enriched frames above. The opposing doorways have architraves with pilasters and moulded cornices and doors of eight fielded panels. The four windows are flanked by pilasters with fielded panels between. The sashes have leaded lights; the upper lights each have an individual depiction of a different type of boat in stained glass; the lower lights have stained-glass roundels for Goole, Grimsby, Kingston upon Hull, and the Humber Conservancy Board badge with the date 1908. The two rooms between the board room and north-south corridor have parquet floors, deep moulded skirting boards and dado rails, stone mantelpieces (painted white) with consoles supporting the shelves, and moulded door architraves with entablatures, with a four-panelled door to the interconnecting doorway. The inner room has a dentil cornice and formerly had a rectangular roof lantern, now replaced by a solid, slate roof.

The east front range opens into an L-shaped entrance and stair hall with a curved inner wall. It has a moulded cornice and tiled dado, continued up the staircase, of cream, green and dark blue tiles with repeated Art Nouveau decoration. Similar tiling is continued along the ground floor of the south corridor to the rear of this range. There is also a fireplace with a timber mantelpiece and moulded, eared door architraves. The open-well staircase has a closed string with a timber balustrade with square, panelled and reeded newel posts with shaped finials, moulded handrails and turned balusters. The staircase to the rear of the west front range is similar in its detailing, but does not have the tiled dado.

The ground-floor rooms in the east range and on the rear side of the building have moulded, eared door architraves, many with five-panelled doors. Many also have moulded cornices and fireplaces with timber mantelpieces. The inner, south-east room of the east range has a canted bay window overlooking a small yard and an adjacent, walk-in safe. The large south-east rear room has panelled and glazed double doors at the east end of the south corridor and is full-height with a deeply coved ceiling, with wide, tripartite sash windows with etched lower lights and horizontal clerestorey windows.

Many of the first-floor rooms also have moulded cornices, moulded and moulded, eared door architraves, with five-panelled doors, and fireplaces with timber mantelpieces. The north-east building in the east front range has built-in cupboards on both sides of the fireplace with panelled lower doors and leaded, glazed upper doors.

History

Conservancy Buildings is located to the rear of buildings on the south side of Whitefriargate on the former site of stables for the Neptune Inn (nos 11-14 Whitefriargate) and a ‘Cole-House’. It opened on 24 June 1843 as a purpose-built Post Office to designs by William Foale, architect and surveyor to Trinity House, a religious guild which became a mariners’ guild in the mid-C15 and whose estate covers the former site of the Whitefriars (Carmelite friary). Some earlier brickwork may have been incorporated into the rear pay room and the westernmost rear room overlies vaulted cellars that do not relate to the post office and are likely to be medieval or have belonged to the friary. In front of the building was a flagged courtyard reached by a wide passageway from Whitefriargate through which the horse-drawn postal carriages could pass. A contemporary newspaper article in the Hull Packet (30 June 1843, p2) described the building as ‘admirably arranged; the large office in the centre for general business communicating with all the minor departments; the postmaster’s room being in such a position as to overlook the windows for the private and general delivery, the centre office, &c. The rooms are very lofty, well ventilated, lighted with gas, and heated with stoves improved from Arnott’s patent….The money order office is a large and handsome room well adapted to the purpose for which it is intended; and, in fine, whilst there seems on the one hand to have been no improper or lavish expenditure, still everything is neat and of good quality….and the town of Hull has, at length, a post office fitting its position as one of the great emporiums of British trade and commerce.’. The building had an ashlar façade (visible on a photograph taken during work in 2011 when the sign POST OFFICE could be seen painted in the frieze to the right-hand wing); the façade is now painted white giving an appearance of stucco.

In 1847 the building was enlarged with a new brick range to the east abutting the original front range, also designed by William Foale. The 1:1,056 Ordnance Survey town plan surveyed in 1853, published in 1856, shows a large, approximately square room labelled Letter Office, with a narrow corridor running north-south on its west side and three rooms to the east, the easternmost labelled Money Order Office, with various small rooms and a long room to the rear labelled Pay Room.

In 1877 a new Post Office was built in Market Place and the Whitefriargate building was leased to the Humber Conservancy Commissioners, becoming known as the Conservancy Buildings. The Commissioners were responsible for the administration of the navigation and pilotage of the Humber estuary. Around this time the interior appears to have been remodelled. An 1886 Goad Insurance Plan and an undated plan (Hull History Centre) show that the large letter office was reduced in width and two smaller offices were added on the west side, with the adjacent corridor narrowed. The roof lantern in the larger room respects its altered dimensions, rather than the letter office dimensions, suggesting that it related to the alterations. The enriched plaster work in the roof lantern indicates that this was a prestige room used as a board room by the Commissioners. The roof lantern is shown on the Goad plan, with another roof lantern shown over the new, innermost, smaller office. The east range of buildings and rear pay room are noted as being two storeys in height.

The Humber Conservancy Act, 1907, transferred the powers and duties of the Conservancy Commissioners to a newly created Humber Conservancy Board, which was appointed on 1 January 1908. The building became the Board’s main offices and further remodelling was undertaken at this time. This included a new external doorcase added to the east front range. The board room had stained glass panels added to the windows. One of these showed their badge of the figure of the Humber as a river god with an oar in his right hand and leaning on two pots from which streams pour representing the rivers Trent and Ouse uniting in the background to form the Humber, the word VMBRE below the figure, encircled by a belt inscribed HUMBER CONSERVANCY COUNCIL and the date 1908. It is likely that the large, carved wall frames above the panelled dado were added at this time. Throughout the building wall tiles, timber fireplaces, eared door architraves and five-panelled doors, and staircases also date from the early C20. The internal fixtures and fittings suggest that the rear pay room was remodelled with rooms off a long south corridor on both floors with a large, full-height room at the east end. The addition of a staircase to the rear of the west range, which the Goad plan shows as single-storeyed, also suggests that this area was now heightened to two storeys.

Later in the C20 a single-storey, brick WC block was built in a small yard to the rear of the east front range, blocking a ground-floor window in its rear wall and another in the north wall of the rear pay room. A second WC block was also built to the rear of the west front range, the latter with a single first-floor WC above.

The Humber Conservancy Board was dissolved in 1966 and management of the Humber estuary passed to the nationalised British Transport Docks Board. The building was used as offices for a time (described as a training centre in the amended List entry of 1994), before becoming vacant.

Reasons for Listing

The Conservancy Buildings, built as a post office in 1843 by William Foale, extended by Foale in 1847, remodelled as offices around 1877 for the Humber Conservancy Commissioners and remodelled again around 1908 for the Humber Conservancy Board, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* the Post Office was designed in a Classical Revival style, built of high-quality ashlar with a relief Royal Coat of Arms in the central pediment, giving an appearance of dependable dignity;

* William Foale was a well-regarded architect and surveyor to Trinity House who designed a number of buildings of architectural quality for them including a marine office, offices, the gatehouse to Trinity House, and a lighthouse, all of which are now listed;

* the later-C19 refurbishment of the interior by the Conservancy Commissioners provided a grand board room lit by a raised roof lantern and incorporating high-quality plasterwork;

* the interior has good-quality fixtures and fittings, many dating from the early-C20 refurbishment when the Humber Conservancy Board was created, most notably the stained glass panels inserted in the board room windows depicting their badge, the coats of arms of ports and various types of boats associated with the estuary.

Historic interest:
* as the oldest surviving Victorian purpose-built post office in England;

* used from 1877 as the offices of the Conservancy Commissioners, responsible for the navigation and pilotage of the Humber estuary, then as the offices of the Humber Conservancy Board from 1908 until the body was dissolved in 1966.

Group value:
* the post office was built for Trinity House and stands in close proximity with Hull Trinity House itself (Grade I) and other listed properties built for the guild, including numbers 8 and 10 on the west side of Trinity House Lane (Grade II), number 2, Trinity House Lane and numbers 1, 2 and 3 on the south side of Whitefriargate (Grade II), numbers 4, 5 and 6 Whitefriargate (Grade II), numbers 7, 8 and 9 Whitefriargate (Grade II), and numbers 10 to 15 Whitefriargate (Grade II*).

External Links

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