The National Conservation Centre, formerly the Midland Railway Goods Warehouse, is located in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Wales, Welsh county of Flintshire across ...

, England. It stands in a block surrounded by Victoria Street, Crosshall Street, Whitechapel, and Peter Street. After it closed as a warehouse it was converted into a conservation centre for

National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool in Merseyside, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The mu ...

in the 1990s. Initially its exhibition area was open to the public, but this closed in 2010. The centre is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a designated Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The warehouse was built as a depot for the storage of railway freight in 1872 for the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 in rail transport, 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had ...

. It was designed by the local architect Henry Sumners of Culshaw and Sumners. The building was extended along Peter Street in 1878 in a similar architectural style. Between 1995 and 1996 it was converted by another local architect, Ken Martin, into the Conservation Centre for National Museums Liverpool. In addition to its conservation work, the centre had an exhibition area open to the public to demonstrate the techniques of conservation, which attracted 60,000 visitors a year. In September 2005 the centre closed for refurbishment, and re-opened in June 2006 as the National Conservation Centre. Because of government cuts in funding, the visitor centre closed in 2010, but conservation work continues in the building.

Architecture

The centre is constructed in red brick on a rusticated stone

plinth A pedestal or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In civil engineering, it is also called ''basement''. The minimum height o ...

, with stone dressings and bands, and some decoration in blue brick. The exterior of the building is expressed as three or four storeys, and around the top of the building is a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

with

modillions A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a cornice which helps to support them. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translated as small teeth). A ...

. The

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downward to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope, with variants including tented roofs and others. Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other vertical sides ...

is in

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

. On each of the four sides are arched openings large enough to admit freight. The front on Crosshall Street is concave; it is in eight

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

, each bay consisting of a tall blind arch containing windows, two of which also have arched entrances. On the Victoria Street front are carved

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

s containing shields and the names of stations of the Midland Railway. In 1921 Charles Reilly, Professor of Architecture at the

University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

, was of the opinion that at the time it was "one of the best buildings in the town". On 14 March 1975, it was designated as a Grade II listed building.

References

{{authority control Commercial buildings completed in 1872 National Museums Liverpool Conservation and restoration organizations Grade II listed buildings in Liverpool Defunct museums in England

History

Architecture

See also

References