Summary
A pair of woolstaplers' warehouses of the first quarter of the C19, converted as offices and flats.
Reasons for Designation
15 and 17 Cheapside, a pair of wool-staplers’ warehouses of the first quarter of the C19, converted as offices and flats, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* its external architectural features denote its former function, including central loading doors to each floor of each warehouse, with a beam for a top-floor hoist above;
* it retains much of its historic structural fabric, most notably in its roof with hewn purlins and trusses and surviving hoist gear, and its earlier sandstone walling to the rear.
Historic interest:
* it represents Wakefield’s continued importance as a centre of the wool trade in the C18 and C19.
Group value:
* it has a strong visual, functional and contextual relationship with the adjacent Grade II-listed early-C19 warehouses at 9, 11, 13 and 19 Cheapside.
History
Wakefield was established during the medieval period at a strategic trade position on the river Calder, which led to the development of Wakefield as the capital of Yorkshire's cloth trade by the C14. Westgate was one of four principal streets with long and narrow burgage plots that remain visible through modern land divisions. These historic plots were owned by craftsmen and traders and had commercial properties facing the street and workshops to the rear.
The warehouses at 15 and 17 Cheapside, off Westgate, were built by the time John Walker’s map of 1823 was surveyed, and may be contemporary with that at number 13. Cheapside was laid out off Westgate in 1802 and is characterised by ranges of wool-staplers’ warehouses, constructed to serve Wakefield’s prospering wool trade. The surrounding group of warehouses is one of the best surviving of its kind in England.
The fenestration suggests that they originally both had a pedestrian entrance in their left-hand bay. By 1881, these warehouses on the south side of Cheapside were not inhabited, but Cheapside hosted only one wool-stapler’s business and one draper’s, and the warehouses might have been occupied by other businesses listed in trade directories, such as wine merchants, carriage makers, painters and plumbers. In the later C20 numbers 15 and 17 were renovated and they remain (2024) in office and residential use.
Details
Wool-stapler’s warehouses of the first quarter of the C19, converted as offices and flats.
MATERIALS: hand-made brick with some sandstone walling, slate roof.
PLAN: a three-storey block facing onto Cheapside with a rear façade to Carter Street.
EXTERIOR: the entrances face Cheapside. The building comprises two units, each of four bays, in red brick laid to English Garden Wall bond of four stretcher courses to each header course. All the openings have segmental-arched brick heads, and the windows all have stone sills; the openings of the left-hand bay of each unit are narrower than the others. The full-height loading bays retain loading doors with overlights, and projecting hoist beams. To either side are stacked windows, all early-C19 eight-over-eight sash windows without horns, except for the lower left window which is a replacement sash inserted in a former doorway. The entrance bay of the right-hand unit has a replacement door in an earlier architrave with overlight. There is a vertical brick joint with number 19 to the right (which is taller), but no clear one with number 13 to the left.
The rear façade is largely of brown brick in English Garden Wall bond of five stretcher courses to each header course, but has a band of coursed rubble sandstone at the right between the exposed basement and the ground floor. There is also inserted vertical timber boarding* with stair windows, across all of bays 3 and 4. All the openings have replacement sash windows. There are vertical mortar joints with number 19 at the left (which is slightly taller), and at the right, number 13, which is lower. There are two external air-conditioning units* at ground-floor level.
INTERIOR: this is largely modernised with offices to the ground and first floors and flats to the top floor, which is reported to retain the structural fabric, including hewn purlins and king-post roof trusses, with retained hoist gear.
* Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the vertical timber boarding and the external air-conditioning units, to the rear façade, are not of special architectural or historic interest. However, any works which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require listed building consent and this is a matter for the local planning authority to determine.
