Reasons for Designation
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Details
335/0/10076
BAILLIE STREET
5
22-MAR-11
II
Purpose-built shop, later railway parcel and enquiry office. c1840. Mellow orange brick, sandstone (heavily painted), slate roof.
PLAN: Large ground-floor shop. Entrance lobby to left (west) side with staircase in stair wing to the rear. Altered layout of rooms on first and second floors.
EXTERIOR: Seven-bay ground floor of stone with cornice forming sill band for first-floor windows. Deeply recessed, round-headed doorway in left-hand bay with outer and inner torus bands with bay-leaf garlands to the arches. Narrow inset panels to each side with relief festoons of flowers, a coffered archway and large central acanthus leaf and lion head ancon. Above the door are egg-and-dart and guilloche bands, and a tympanum with a central roundel with relief carving of a flower (perhaps a passion flower), with acanthus leaf spandrels. At the base of the doorway are curved bumpers. The door has two full-width moulded panels with two square panels above, with metal studs to the stiles and rails. To each side of the doorway is a triangular spandrel with relief foliate carving. Arcade of six closely-spaced windows with round-headed torus band frames with bay-leaf garlands to the arches and central, garlanded, console brackets supporting miniature scrolled pediments with egg-and-dart mouldings, which overlap the cornice. Each window frame encompasses a tympanum with an individually detailed relief festoon of acanthus leaves and another plant including grapes and hops, with a guilloche band beneath, alternately plain or enriched. Between the frame arches are flower roundels. Windows have two-light horned sash frames, with a plain unornamented plinth band. The upper floors are of brick in Flemish bond with deep timber bracketed eaves. Second floor has three evenly spaced windows with a stone sill band (painted black) and gauged brick lintels. First floor has five windows with cornice sill band and gauged brick lintels; three line up with the windows above. The first and fourth windows are probable insertions as both have brick lintels which differ in appearance, being made up of shorter, paler bricks. All windows have two-light hornless sash frames.
INTERIOR: Square entrance lobby with geometric encaustic tiles. To the right is the shop, which retains no original features, and to the rear is a well staircase. Turned timber newel posts with ramped handrail and stick balusters. First floor has two rooms to the front of the building and one large, irregularly shaped room to the east rear, all with chimney breasts but no fireplaces. East front room (now subdivided) has a round-headed niche to each side of chimney breast and a moulded cornice. No original features on second floor.
HISTORY: Baillie Street was laid out around 1835 when it is shown on a town map as part of a small grid of new streets imposed on the earlier streetscape on the east side of Rochdale town centre. It was named after Colonel Hugh Duncan Baillie, owner of the land. No properties appear in the 1837 trade directory indicating that they were still under construction, but by 1843 there is a record of a William Fulton, spirit, ale, and porter merchant, Baillie Street. He again appears in 1851, when a trade directory lists No 5 as 'Porter dealers, Fulton and Dow (and ale)'. The 1851 6 inch Ordnance Survey map and 1:500 town map show the building as having a trapezoid shape with a stair wing projecting at the west end of the rear elevation, the shape apparently dictated by pre-existing buildings on Yorkshire Street to the north. In 1861 the property was still being used as a wine and spirits merchants, run by J H Kirtley. In 1869 Kirtly had moved to 25 Baillie Street and No 5 was listed as the Enquiry and Parcel Office for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Line. By 1899-1900 the premises were shared with the Great Central Railway Company, and in 1916 the building provided a joint office for the Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North Western, and Midland Railways. It was also the premises of the Rochdale Card and Blowing Room and Ring Spinners Association. By 1935 the railway companies had moved out, although the Association remained, together with H Marsh, scale makers.
More recently No 5 has been occupied by various building societies, a solicitors' firm, and a shop on the ground floor.
SOURCES: Trade Directories and historic photographs of Baillie Street held in the Local Studies Room, Rochdale
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION
No 5 Baillie Street, Rochdale, a purpose-built shop of the mid-C19, and later in the C19 a railway enquiry office, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural Interest: the Italianate ground-floor façade of six windows and a large doorway is of notably good quality and intactness, and the upper two floors have gauged brick lintels, un-horned window sashes, and timber bracketed eaves characteristic of an early C19 date
* Decorative Quality: No 5 is clearly a prestige building as demonstrated by the craftsmanship of the opulent stone ground-floor façade which incorporates relief foliate carvings and lion head console bracket to the doorway, and intricate and individually designed foliate carvings to window tympanums
