27 and 29 Wellington Road and 8-16 (even) Nelson Street, Dewsbury, Kirklees

Summary

A textile (wool) warehouse including offices and shops of 1868, converted to apartments late in the C20.

Description

A textile (wool) warehouse including offices and shops of 1868, possibly by RT Johnson, converted to apartments late in the C20.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone walls, slate roof.

PLAN: L-shaped, facing south and west, and abutted at the east by 2-6 (even) Nelson Street and 1 and 1a Wellington Street.

EXTERIOR: standing in the Dewsbury Town Centre Conservation Area to the south of a block of smaller warehouses. The building is of three storeys with a basement to Wellington Road and four storeys to Nelson Street, in a free Venetian Gothic style.

To Wellington Road the frontage is of six bays, with a pinnacled, gableted pilaster-buttress at the left; at the right, the upper floor has a similar gableted turret, supported by a twisted colonnette. The ground floor is ashlar, the upper floors rock-faced. The eaves have moulded stone corbels in the manner of a Lombardy frieze, and each upper floor has continuous sill and lintel bands, with paired windows with moulded mullions. To the second floor these are lancets, while to the first floor they have shouldered heads, beneath low, two-centred arches, with incised decoration in the tympana. The ground-floor is arcaded with shouldered heads to openings beneath similar arches, each with a small patera-vent in the tympanum. Complex decoration is also incised between the openings. Bays (from the left) 3, 5 and 6 have doors, those in bay 5 original and Gothic-panelled. The other bays have blocked basement windows, and ground-floor casements. The upper floors have original vertical-sliding sashes (with horns) to most openings.

The three-bay curved corner frontage to the south is similarly-detailed, and flanked at the right by a matching turret with colonnette. In the centre is a false gable with a shaped false chimneystack. Below is a roundel containing blind plate-tracery with a stopped hoodmould. The date 1868 is incised above the central window. The windows are altered but the surrounds original (that at the left occupying a former doorway).

To the right, on Nelson Street, are a further three bays of the same detailing, flanked at the right by a similar pilaster-buttress to that on Wellington Road.

Further right is a symmetrical, four storey, six-bay frontage flanked by a matching pilaster-buttress. The detailing is similar but subtly different. Bays 1, 3, 4 and 6 have ground-floor shopfronts with replacement windows and fascias, but original glazed doors with Gothic-edged panels. Above each shop are stacked, three-light windows; arcaded on the top floor, Venetian with shouldered heads on the second floor, and lancets below a low two-centred arch on the first floor. Bays 2 and 5 have ground-floor entrances (with replacement doors), and stacked single-light stair windows above. Various tympana have incised decoration.

The facades to Back Nelson Street are plain with stone sills and lintels to openings. A vertical joint with a change in coursing and a slight outward step indicate where the building is abutted by that to the east.

INTERIOR: retains original staircases and balustrades, and some cornicing and architraves.

History

27 and 29 Wellington Road, and 8-16 (even) Nelson Street stands within a block of land which had been acquired before 1848 by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), but not ultimately needed for railway purposes. The land bounded by Nelson Street, Wellington Road and Wellington Street was auctioned off in 12 lots in 1851. The 1852 Ordnance Survey (OS) 1:1,056 town plan (which was surveyed in 1850-1851) shows that these streets had been laid out by then, but not developed. The sales particulars for the auction suggest that since that survey, the west end of Back Nelson Street had also been defined.

The expansion and importance of Dewsbury as a textile town, and the wealth that was generated from the textile industry in the latter half of the C19, was due in no small part to the development of a warehouse system to take advantage of the railway after it arrived in 1848. Substantial, sometimes monumental, packing and shipping warehouses were developed for woollens, in particular shoddy and mungo, of which this area was the national centre.

In the late C19 the names Wellington Road and Wellington Street were somewhat interchangeable, and so directory entries cannot be relied on for determining when development took place here. However, this building does appear on Malcolm Paterson’s plan of 1870, when there was no abutting building to the east. The block on the north side of Nelson Street was probably developed progressively south from 1855 and stylistically the building to the north of this appears to date from the 1860s. This supports the datestone on this building of 1868 at the west end of this building.

Stylistically this building resembles little else in Dewsbury. It does, however, have several similarities to the arcade building on King Street in Wigan that was designed by the Wigan-based architect RT Johnson, who had known close links with Dewsbury.

The first Goad fire insurance map of Dewsbury, published in 1887, marks the building as warehouses and shops; the rear half was the Dewsbury-Paris firm Galaup and Patterson’s rag warehouse, and 29 Wellington Road and 14 Nelson Street combined to form another warehouse, while the three shops to the east were numbered 12, 11 and 10. The map also shows that on each floor there was some interconnection with a neighbouring building to the east, built in 1873. Mixed commercial and industrial use continued throughout the late C19, and by 1911 there were some residential occupants at number 27. By the Goad map of 1958 the shop at 29 was selling carpets, with a mending business above and a vacant top floor. Number 27 had a canteen on its first floor, and the cloth warehouse still ran the length of the rear of the building, with occupiers in the front range including two printers, offices, two newsagents and a club. The building was converted to residential use later in the C20, with limited alteration.

Reasons for Listing

27 and 29 Wellington Road and 8-16 (even) Nelson Street, Dewsbury, constructed in 1868, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it is a good example of an urban palazzo warehouse, a regionally-distinctive building type associated with Dewsbury's textile industry at the peak of its prosperity and success, and later adapted for commercial use;
* with principal elevations in Venetian Gothic style originally designed to impress and convey the status and quality of the goods and business contained within;
* it is an early example of a warehouse building incorporating retail space as part of the design, and retaining some interior features of interest.

Historic interest:

* it reflects Dewsbury’s position as the national centre of the shoddy and mungo industry in the second half of the C19, the forerunner of modern-day recycling industries.

Group value:

* it has strong group value with neighbouring historic former warehouses and the railway station which all shared functional links with the textile industry.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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