The Wet Dock, Sowerby Bridge
Description: The Wet Dock
Grade: II*
Date Listed: 17 October 1975
English Heritage Building ID: 339344
OS Grid Reference: SE0653223713
OS Grid Coordinates: 406532, 423713
Latitude/Longitude: 53.7098, -1.9025
Location: Bolton Brow, Halifax, Calderdale HX6 2AG
Locality: Sowerby Bridge
Local Authority: Calderdale
County: West Yorkshire
Country: England
Postcode: HX6 2AG
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Listing Text
SOWERBY BRIDGE
1330/13/216 SOWERBY BRIDGE CANAL BASIN
17-OCT-75 THE WET DOCK
(Formerly listed as:
BOLTON BROW
SOWERBY BRIDGE CANAL BASIN
4
EAST WAREHOUSE)
GV II*
Canal wet dock and warehouse. Probably c.1775, for the Calder and Hebble Navigation Company. Coursed stone, corrugated asbestos roof. 3 storeys, 7 x 3 bays. West front: symmetrical facade, the central bay blind. Openings have plain stone surrounds, the windows with flat-faced mullions (some mullions removed). Bays 3 and 5 have a loading door on each floor, those on ground and 2nd floors of bay 5 now blocked and with 2-light windows. 3-light windows to bays 2 and 6. 2-light windows to bays 1 and 7, that to first floor of bay 1 made into door to give access to iron crane attached to left corner. Paired gutter brackets on table. Rear: as front. Right return: central loading door to ground and first floors. Left return, fronting basin: tall central archway giving access to wet dock flanked on ground and first floors by 3-light windows with small pane glazing (mullions of ground-floor left window removed). Interior: central longitudinal bay forms wet dock. Chamfered timber posts support large scantling beams. First floor: remains of machinery suspended from ceiling. Trap doors here and on second floor. Elaborate roof trusses with vertical and diagonal members.
History. Tenders were invited for the building of a first warehouse on the basin in 1770, this presumably being The Moorings (No 1) (qv); another warehouse had been built by 1778 and others decided upon in 1788 and 1792. Included at grade II* as an exceptionally fine and well-preserved warehouse.
Sources: (Hadfield, p58, Sowerby Bridge p 23). C Hadfield, Canals of Yorkshire and North-East England (1972).
Sowerby Bridge, Chamber of Trade and Commerce Official Guide.
Listing NGR: SE0653223713
Source: English Heritage
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI Click-use licence number C2008002006.