66 Bridgewater Street, Riverside, Liverpool

Summary

Warehouse and former office, around 1857, by William Culshaw for Stuart & Douglas, ship owners, coopers and merchants.

Description

Warehouse and former office, around 1857, by William Culshaw for Stuart & Douglas, ship owners, coopers and merchants.

MATERIALS: brown brick with red-brick and red-sandstone dressings, and slate roof coverings.

PLAN: 66 Bridgewater Street lies to the north-east of Queen's Dock and has a rectangular plan with a relatively narrow frontage, but a depth that extends a full block to the rear. It is bounded by Bridgewater Street to the front (south-east side), Kitchen Street to the rear (north-west side), altered and rebuilt buildings on the north-east side, and part of the former yard of the Stuart & Douglas cooperage on the south-west side.

EXTERIOR: externally all the windows have red-brick segmental-arched heads and red-sandstone sills, and most have timber frames, although some cast-iron frames exist. The building has a relatively shallow-pitched roof with slate coverings, red-sandstone copings to each gable end, and a series of small rooflights just below the ridgeline on the north-east side and paired skylights at each end on the south-west side. A brick chimneystack exists towards the south corner of the roof. Each end of the building is similarly detailed with a central loading bay and a raised slate-clad jigger loft (that would have originally housed hoist machinery) at each end of the roof; the slate has been removed from the side walls of the lofts and replaced by modern boarding, but survives to the roofs and rear walls.

The front (south-east) elevation facing Bridgewater Street is of three-bays with a whitewashed ground floor and a central loading bay set within a full-height recess with cut and rubbed jambs and a red-brick arched head. Sheet-iron loading doors exist to the ground, second and third floors, whilst to the first floor are paired multipaned cast-iron windows. The ground-floor loading door is deeply recessed and the second and third floors have cast-iron floor ends. At the top of the loading bay is a projecting slightly-domed cast-iron head and hoist, and flanking the base of the loading bay are protective timber fenders that were designed to prevent goods from damaging the building when first lifted. To the ground-floor right is a doorway with a lugged and shouldered painted-sandstone surround incorporating a triple keystone to its head. A sheet-iron entrance door is set back behind a modern security grille. To the floors above are windows, and that to the first floor is taller. The left bay is similarly detailed except that the first-floor window is blind and the ground floor has a window in the same style as those to the uppermost floors. The ground-floor window retains a single external bar and a sheet-iron shutter, but none are present to the other windows. Between the ground and first floor and across the whole frontage is a painted signage band and early-C20 lettering that reads 'QUEEN'S STORES COMPANY/ TURBINE BAGS SHIPS CHANDLERS SAILMAKERS'.

The rear elevation facing Kitchen Street is similarly detailed to the front elevation, but without an entrance doorway and painted signage, and with windows to each floor flanking the central loading bay. Sheet-iron loading doors exist to each floor on this side and original cast-iron bars survive to two of the windows.

The south-west elevation faces into part of the former yard area of the Stuart & Douglas cooperage. It is of nine bays with large openings to the ground floor with sandstone blocking detail to the jambs that were probably all originally doorways. Only one opening remains open with damaged timber and sheet-iron doors, whilst the others have either been completely or partly bricked up. To the first floor are similarly sized windows; those to the right contain what appear to be original eight-over-eight sashes and possibly lit the firm's office(s). The windows to the two upper floors are smaller and one towards the north-west end of the top floor has been partly bricked up.

INTERIOR: the interior was not inspected, but a small number of photographs were provided by the owner. The photographs reveal that there are heavy softwood-timber floor joists and cast-iron columns, and at least one internal brick compartment. King-post trusses are also visible on the top floor, along with boarded jigger lofts. No photographs were provided of the internal stairs, but a warehouse survey in 1977 recorded that inside the main entrance was an enclosed stair bay containing a stair flight leading up to the first floor, a winder stair flight to the centre of the building on the north-east side providing access to the second floor, a straight flight at the front of the building providing access between the second and third floors, and an enclosed stair bay to the north corner of the building containing a winder stair serving all the floor levels. There is also understood to be a basement.

History

66 Bridgewater Street is believed to have been designed by the Liverpool surveyor-architect William Culshaw in around 1857. On the 1:1056 town plan published in 1849 a different building is depicted on the site, which could be a shipwrights' business of G Raffield & Co identified in an 1839-1840 trade directory. From its construction in around 1857, and until the 1930s, the building was occupied by Stuart & Douglas, who were African merchants, ship owners, coopers, sailmakers, and chandlers. The firm used 66 Bridgewater Street as their head office and merchandise store, and the cooperage was located immediately to the south-west with buildings located around a large yard (all now demolished and a cross road inserted through the centre of the site between Bridgewater Street and Kitchen Street), with 66 Bridgewater Street forming the north-east side of the cooperage yard.

In 1909 the firm's operation at 66 Bridgewater Street was renamed as the Queens Stores Company where it traded as a ship's chandlers (a ship's chandler is a dealer who specialises in the supplying of equipment and supplies to ships ready for their voyages) and sail makers. In 1934 the building was sold to S R Manufacturing Co Ltd who manufactured sacks, bags, lifebelts, soaps and disinfectant, and also continued to trade the Queens Stores Company. According to trade directories the building appears to have ceased active use in the late C20.

William Culshaw (1807-1874) was a Liverpool surveyor who established an architectural practice that was prolific in the Liverpool area and designed many buildings during a boom period of the city's expansion. In 1861 Culshaw went into partnership with Henry Sumners (1825-1895), an architect who had trained under Charles Reed and Charles Barry, and the partnership continued until 1873 when Culshaw's eldest son Alfred joined him in partnership. William Culshaw has a number of listed buildings to his name, including: Maer Hall, Staffordshire (mid-C17 and extended in the mid-C19 by Culshaw, Grade II); the Church of St John, Southport (1864-1865, Grade II); and the Church of St Luke, Formby (1852-1853, Grade II).

Peter Stuart (1814-1888) was the son of a Genoese mariner who settled in Liverpool. After serving an apprenticeship as a cooper Stuart established his own cooperage in 1837 at Bronte Street, producing casks for palm-oil merchants trading to the Gulf of Guinea, Africa. Having learnt something of this very lucrative trade through his cooperage clients Stuart entered the palm-oil trade in 1844 and bought his first ship known as Ambassador. The ship was sent to an uninhabited island known as Ichaboa Island to load guano, which was sold upon its return and helped fund the purchase of cargo that Stuart sent to Benin to begin trading for palm oil.

In 1847 Peter Stuart was introduced to Peter Douglas (1815-1883), a doctor who had previously been an agent for another Liverpool firm of merchants, W A & G Maxwell and Company, and had extensive knowledge and experience of the palm-oil trade. Peter Stuart also had an interest in medicine and was a homeopath who distributed homeopathic medication to the poor. Together the two men founded the firm of Stuart & Douglas, coopers and merchants, and switched their trade to the Niger Delta, building up a fleet of ships and trading with West African chiefs. By 1852 Stuart & Douglas was the second largest importer of palm oil in Britain. From 1856 they also operated East Indian and Australian routes, and also later re-established trading at Benin, and a route from San Francisco bringing back wheat and copper ore. By the early 1900s the firm had also moved into boat building and importing West African timber, and opened offices elsewhere in Liverpool and London. They also built and operated Stuart Wharf alongside the Manchester Ship Canal. After selling the wharf in 1919 land was purchased at Horsfall Street in Liverpool and the largest machine cooperage in Europe was created, producing over 1,000 palm-oil casks per week. The firm was liquidated in 1934 following the Great Depression. Stuart Creek and Douglas Creek in Nigeria are named after the firm's founders.

Reasons for Listing

66 Bridgewater Street, constructed in around 1857 by William Culshaw for Stuart & Douglas, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it was designed by William Culshaw, a notable Liverpool surveyor-architect with several listed buildings to his name, and is an important example of one of his industrial commissions, reflecting Liverpool's development in the C19 and the increasing importance of warehouses to its identity as a maritime mercantile city;

* its design is above the purely functional and is enhanced by the survival of increasingly rare early-C20 external painted signage;

* its fireproof features highlight the changing technology and developments in warehouse design and construction in the C19.

Historic interest:

* it was constructed for Stuart & Douglas, a firm of ship owners, coopers and merchants that rose to international prominence in the mid-C19 through to the early C20, and is the last surviving element of their once large cooperage established at Bridgewater Street;

* it is an important survival of a mid-C19 warehouse associated with the trade of the international port city of Liverpool at the peak of its prosperity and success, and is a physical reminder of the mid-C19 character of the Baltic Triangle, an area once densely packed with warehouses and industrial premises as the dock system expanded southwards from the city centre.

External Links

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