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Description: The Salt Warehouse

Address: Salt Warehouse Canal Wharf Sowerby Bridge West Yorkshire

Grade: II

Group detail: Sowerby Bridge Canal Basin

Full description:
(formerly listed as Central Warehouse (No. 3), Bolton Brow). Canal warehouse. Probably 1796. For the Calder and Hebble Navigation Company. Coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings, unroofed and being rebuilt at time of resurvey (October 1985). 3 storeys, 2 upstanding at time of resurvey. 6 bays. West front: 3 left bays: each bay has a 2-storey elliptical archway with rounded corners. The 2 left arches giving access to wet docks, the 3rd a through way. 3 right bays: wide central loading door to each floor flanked by 3-light windows (ground-floor window now of 2 lights). Former list description records 3-light windows over archways and hipped slate roof as front. Interior: on ground floor of right hand bays large scantling chamfered timber posts support cross-beams. The through-archway has stone cross walls with a doorway to each side, that on right with panelled double door. The left hand bay still has wet dock; the other former wet dock is now flagged and in the floor of this bay is a large stone with socket for a wooden crane which survives leaning against a toilet block to rear. Occupied by Richard Milnes, the first large scale Trans-Pennine carrier, until his last failure in 1799 when it was let to the Rochdale Canal Company (Sowerby Bridge, p23). The 1793 Rochdale Canal Act instructed the Calder and Hebble Navigation Company to build at Sowerby Bridge whatever wharves and warehouses the Rochdale Company wanted, the latter to pay for the space they used (Hadfield, p 60). A contract in 1796 to build a new warehouse is attributed to this building (Sowerby Bridge,p23). C Hadfield, (Canals of Yorkshire and North-East England) (1972). Sowerby Bridge, Chamber of Trade and Commerce Official Guide RCHM(E) report.