Description

1022/0/10033

UNION QUAY
Irvins Building

26-JUL-02
II
Offices, sale room, chandlers' shop, workshops and warehouse of Richard Irvin and Sons. 1913. Red brick with ashlar dressings; hipped slate roof to range on right, flat roof to steel-framed or reinforced concrete range to left.

PLAN: office range located to right (north east) of warehouse which is cranked towards the north.

EXTERIOR: Two-storey office to right has modillion cornice to deep band, outer canted bay windows and central window all with stone-mullions and cross transoms; swags carved in band above ground floor openings, all square-headed with carved brackets to cornice over and pilasters rising to pyramidal finials flanking shop window to right. Tall four storey three bay range to left, with three segmental-arched openings to ashlar ground floor and recessed bays articulated by pilasters with flat-relief carved capitals beneath broad entablature and cornice with stepped central parapet; segmental-arched windows.

INTERIOR: timber columns with cast-iron compression columns to range on left; the timber floors said to have marks on the floor where the nets were pinned out for repair. Reported to have oak panelling etc in range in right.

HISTORY: This building has stylised architectural detailing typical of the period and is the most prominent building on the harbour front at North Shields. It was built as a multi-functional commercial premises for Richard Irvin and Sons, fishing boat owners, fish salesmen and auctioneers. Irvin was a renowned pioneer of steam trawling, and was reputed to be the largest operator in the industry outside Peterhead in Scotland. Being such a large employer (with over 30 boats and hundreds of workers), Irvins ran a banking system for their own employees which was housed in the office range, which had a first-floor boardroom, on the right.

This building is a large-scale, prominent and historically important example of the industrial-scale, specialist fishing port that was the creation of the last quarter of the C19, and was concentrated around the North Sea ports of England and Scotland.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26314658

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)