Commercial Street in Morley

 

A hand shake and heart motif on a former warehouse

Having encountered 5 former Nonconformist chapels within a distance of less than 400 metres, since leaving the Church of St. Mary in the Wood, it seemed natural to dedicate my last Language of Stone Blog post to all of those that I unexpectedly encountered during my walk around Morley. 

 

Commercial Street on the 1854 OS map

Resuming the account of my day out at the north end of Commercial Street, the 1854 edition of the Ordnance Survey (OS) map, which was surveyed from 1847 to 1852, shows that this was an essentially undeveloped lane to the south of the ancient town centred on the area around Morley Bottoms – with ribbon development along Queen Street, where a manor house, a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and a Primitive Sunday school are marked. 

 

The growth of the population of Morley

 

During the second half of the C19, as with all of the northern towns and cities set on the Pennine Coal Measures Group strata, the mechanised production of the local industry – fired by the locally mined coal – had led to an exponential growth in the population, which the Census records as rising from 13057 in 1851 to 38404 in 1901, before flattening off in the early C20. 

 

Commercial Street on the 1908 OS map

 

The 1908 edition of the OS map shows that the area to either side of Commercial Street had been densely developed with a mixture of woollen mills and other commercial buildings set amongst blocks of back-to-back terraced houses, with chapels and schools scattered amongst them. 

 

The former Gas Office

 

The first building to catch my eye as I walked south down Commercial Street was the former Gas Office, dating to the first half of the C19, which is not listed but has some interesting features. It combines quite thinly coursed rock-faced walling and massive stone dressings, with an ornate door surround that has cable moulding and pink Peterhead granite columns with Corinthian capitals. 

A Peterhead granite column

Next to this is Thorp House, a pair of semi-detached houses that have the same pattern of walling stone and dressings and first appear on the 1894 OS map. The two houses have different designs but, although quite substantial and with the appearance of being built for occupants with moderate social status, the larger house actually has a back-to-back layout. 

 

Thorp House

 

The properties that were built next to this have been demolished, with a car park occupying the plot of land, but just beyond this is the Grade II Listed Morley library (1906), which is a fine example of a building funded by Andrew Carnegie and designed by the borough engineer, W.E. Putman. 

 

Morley library

 

The relatively plain ashlar façade is dominated by the very elaborate Neoclassical style portal, which has columns with elaborate Ionic capitals with an entablature supporting a segmental pediment and a tympanum with a floriated carved cartouche. 

 

The segmental pediment with the floriated tympanum and cartouche

 

Although not strictly relevant to this Language of Stone Blog, I was most impressed with its interior, with the Morley coat of arms laid out in mosaic, the colourful Art Nouveau Burmantofts faience tiles in the entrance lobby and staircase and the frieze, which were all created by T.K. Yeates of Leeds. 

 

Views of the interior of Morley library

 

Just beyond the library, I got a view of the tower of Morley Town Hall, along with a brick chimney that I thought must be part of a textile mill, but the 1908 OS map or the Morley Community Archives and Yorkshire Industrial Heritage websites make no reference to this. 

 

A chimney and the tower of Morley Town Hall

In front of this on Commercial Street is a substantial late C19/early C20 13 bay and 3 storied building, with a stone frontage, which forms part of a complex of buildings that the chimney seems to be part of, but again there is mention of this building. 

 

A possible warehouse building on Commercial Street

The building has a very ornate surround to the arch above the central main entrance, which has a decorated keystone surmounted by a beehive, with floriated spandrels to each side that include motifs of a pair of scales and shaking hands with a heart above it. These can refer to an idealised collective society, partnership and cooperation and fairness respectively, although I am far from being an expert on such symbolism in architecture. 

 

A detail of the entrance to the former warehouse

A clue to its use, which is likely to be as a warehouse, comes from an inscription above the splay of the building on the corner of Commercial Street and Albion Street, against which it was built, which describes it as the Industrial Co-operative Society Stores Limited (1869). 

 

The former Morley Industrial Co-operative Society building

 

The Morley Industrial Co-operative Society was founded in 1866, with the Albion Street building being its first branch and, from some online research I have discovered that the use of a beehive, which sits above the inscription, has a long history in the Co-operative movement. 

 

The inscription with the beehive

Both of these buildings repeat the pattern of thinly coursed rock-faced walling stone, with massive sandstone dressings, which can again be seen in Stoneleigh House - a substantial house that was built during this period of rapid expansion in Morley. 

 

Stoneleigh House

 

On the opposite corner is another substantial building that is marked on the 1894 OS map as ‘Hall’, which is built with deeper courses of rock-faced Thornhill Rock, with massive sandstone used as cills and heads to the windows, band courses, voussoirs and panels to the central first floor window, which have a compass and set square and a mallet and chisel cut into them – symbols that are typically seen on a Freemasons' lodge. 

 

The former Freemasons' lodge

 

I was particularly interested to see that the Thornhill Rock voussoirs alternate with a dull red sandstone which, when enlarging my photographs, I can see has differential weathering of laminations that highlight its bedding characteristics. 

 

A detail of red sandstone voussoirs

 

I think that this is most likely to be Red Mansfield stone - a sandy variety of the Upper Permian Cadeby Formation - which the railway connections at the time would have provided the architect with the opportunity to readily specify. 

 

The entrance to Peel mill

 

Continuing along Commercial Street beyond the large brick built former Peel mill, which was largely rebuilt after a fire in 1915, which a datestone on the infilled entrance records, I finished at the Commercial Inn (1906), another fine unlisted building on the corner with Middleton Road.

 

The Commercial Inn