Egerton Buildings, Ramsden Dock Road, Barrow-in-Furness: An Investigation into the Tenement Buildings
Author(s): Matthew Withey
Egerton Buildings are a pair of tenement blocks in the Barrow Island district of Barrow-in-Furness – an area that was once, and to a lesser extent still is, dominated by heavy industry and had an ample stock of associated housing for workers. Egerton Buildings are situated to the south-west of Ramsden Dock Road between Michaelson Road to the north-west and Siemens Street to the south-east. They were designed in 1879 by architects Paley & Austin of Lancaster and Barrow-in-Furness and erected between 1880 and 1886 by the contractors Smith & Caird of Dundee, working on behalf of the Furness Railway Company. Built most probably to provide accommodation for the families of employees in the Furness Railway Company’s nearby shipbuilding works, they consist of two identical four-storey blocks of nine tenements, making eighteen tenements in total. There are eight flats within each tenement, giving 72 flats per block and 144 flats in all. As originally planned, 128 of the flats had one bedroom and 16 had two. Each flat had an entrance hall, a kitchen/living room, a scullery and an open drying area, enclosed by railings, off which opened a water closet, a coal store and a dust or ash store. Designed in a simplified French Renaissance style, the tenement blocks are of red brick with concrete dressings. The roofs are covered with grey slates with red ceramic ridges. Only relatively minor alterations (such as renewed fenestration) have affected the exterior during the lifetime of the buildings, and the plan-form is substantially intact, but most internal details have been lost.
- Report Number:
- 28/2008
- Series:
- Research Department Reports
- Pages:
- 32
- Keywords:
- Standing Building
