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

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan county, metropolitan and ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of List of ceremonial counties of England, 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Merse ...

, 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, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non ...

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, an ...

as a designated Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

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. 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 its headquarters. It am ...

. It was designed by the local architect Henry Sumners of

Culshaw and Sumners Culshaw and Sumners was a firm of English architects and surveyors who practised in Liverpool in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The work of the practice reflected the growing economic prosperity of the city during this period. Much of ...

. 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 (from French ''piédestal'', Italian ''piedistallo'' 'foot of a stall') 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 c ...

, 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 that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

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 (architecture), cornice which it helps to support. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translat ...

. The

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

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 rock. ...

. 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, circular bay with a narr ...

, 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 fill ...

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

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, 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 Unused buildings in Liverpool

History

Architecture

See also

References