23 and 25 Wellington Road

Summary

Two small textile (wool) warehouses of the early 1860s, altered in 1872 and converted to apartments in the C21.

Reasons for Designation

23 and 25 Wellington Road, Dewsbury, constructed in the early 1860s, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* it is a good example of a small-scale urban palazzo warehouse, a regionally-distinctive building type associated with Dewsbury's textile industry at the peak of its prosperity and success;
* with a principal elevation in Classical style originally designed to impress and convey the status and quality of the goods and business contained within.

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.

History

23 and 25 Wellington Road 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 were no abutting buildings to the east. The block was probably developed progressively south from 1855 and stylistically this building appears to date from the 1860s. The small lightwell to the north of number 23 suggests that it was built after number 21, which is thought to be late-1850s in date. The Classical style, carved-head keystones and lugged window architraves are similar to nearby buildings by the firms of Charles Henry Marriott and John Kirk, who were both active in Dewsbury in this period.

The first Goad fire insurance map of Dewsbury, published in 1887, marks the building as a wool, hair and rag warehouse; the original two small warehouses having been combined. The Goad map shows that the warehouse to the rear (now number 3 Wellington Street) had been built (it is dated 1872) and that there was by then some interconnection between the two buildings. The building now known as 3 Wellington Street was occupied at the time by Bielefield Bros and was also a wool and hair warehouse, so it is possible they were also occupying 23 and 25 Wellington Road. By the 1880s number 23 contained the goods and parcels office of the Great Eastern Railway.

On the Back Nelson Street façade there is a straight vertical joint and the stone coursing differs between number 23 and 25, suggesting that the side wall of 25 was rebuilt beyond that joint. This could have been to provide it with rear access once the warehouse to the rear was built, and 23 and 25 might originally have been parallel, each with their own rear access.

In 1958 the Goad map shows that the building was still a warehouse (for wool in 23 and yarn in 25). In the C21 the building was converted to apartments, and the entrance to 25 altered to become a basement access with window above.

Details

Two small textile (wool) warehouses of the early 1860s, altered in 1872 and converted to apartments in the C21.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone walls, slate roof.

PLAN: facing west and abutted at the north by 21 Wellington Road, and at the east by 3 Wellington Street.

EXTERIOR: standing in the Dewsbury Town Centre Conservation Area and forming part of a block of smaller warehouses. The building is of three storeys with a basement, with a four-bay frontage in a Classical Italianate palazzo style.

It has an ashlar basement, rusticated ground floor and quoins, and narrow-coursed upper floors with moulded stone plat bands and eaves cornice. The entrances are in the two central bays (that to the right now altered), with panelled double doors remaining in bay 2 (from the left). The outer bays have basement windows below arched windows with moulded aprons. All the ground-floor openings are arched with keystones carved with heads. The upper floors have shouldered and eared architraves, with keystones on the first floor. The roof is hipped, with corniced eaves stacks.

The south façade is angled, with four bays at the left and one bay to the right, each of four storeys in rock-faced stonework with plain stone sills and lintels. Bay 4 has taking-in doors. Bay 5 has a straight vertical joint, with taking-in doors with stone surrounds forming the left jamb of the windows. The eaves have paired plain stone gutter corbels. The windows have been replaced throughout.

INTERIOR: the interior retains original structural roof timbers, beams and columns (now boxed in), with an inserted modern staircase and partition walls. The party wall with 3 Wellington Street has blocked former openings.

Sources

Books and journals
Harman, R, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England. Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South (2017), 204
Kelly, ER, Directory of the West Riding of Yorkshire Pt 1 (Places A-K) (1881), 295-297

Websites
Goad fire insurance map of 1887, from British Library website, accessed 22/05/2022 from https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/firemaps/england/yorkshire/largeimage147793.html

Other
Malcolm Paterson, ‘Plan of Dewsbury’, 1870, Dewsbury Library.

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