Heritage Assessment of Maclaines Warehouses, the Canal Basin, Exeter for Topsham Brewery and Forward Space
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Heritage Assessment of Maclaines Warehouses, the Canal Basin, Exeter for Topsham Brewery and Forward Space Keystone Historic Buildings Consultants 50 Blackboy Road Exeter EX4 6TB 01392435728 [email protected] https://www.keystone-historic-buildings.com Report K/928 December 2019 revision Frontispiece. Top. Elevation facing the canal basin Below. Elevation facing the Exe. Contents Page 1 - Introduction 1-2 The Site 1 The Brief 1 Methodology 1-2 2 - Statutory and non-statutory controls 2-3 Listing 2 Conservation Area 2 The Canal Basin Masterplan 2-3 3 - Historical Development of the of the Setting 3-12 1830-1900 3-9 The 20th Century 9-12 4 - Units 1 and 2 13-28 4.1 Unit 1 17-24 4.2 Unit 2 24-28 5 - Units 3 and 4 29-38 Schedule of External Joinery 39-49 Provisional Phaes and Annoted Plans 50-61 6 - Heritage Assessment of the warehouse range in 2019 63-68 6.1 - Archaeological Potential below Ground 63 6.2 - The Setting 63-67 6.3 – The Warehouse Range 68 7 - Impact Assessment 69-72 8 – Sources and Acknowledgements 73-74 Appendix One 75-78 Selective timeline Appendix Two 79 Scope of Heritage Assessment Conditions and Limitations 80 Fig.1. Identification of the warehouse range units used in this document. Heritage Assessment of Maclaines Warehouses, the Canal Basin, Exeter for Topsham Brewery and Forward Space (based on guidance from Exeter City Council’s Conservation Officer) SX9212891917 1 - Introduction This assessment has been prepared for Topsham Brewery and Forward through Robbie Thompson of Shape Studio following pre-application advice from Andrew Pye, Exeter City Council’s Principal Project Manager (Heritage). The Site The site consists of a warehouse range built on the east side of the Canal Basin at Exeter Quay. The range consists of four separately-roofed warehouse units built in three phases. In this assessment they are referred to as Units 1-4, north to south [Fig.1]. Units 3 and 4 were built together as a double warehouse. The building range is aligned north-east south-west, but for simplicity’s sake it is escribed as on a north-south alignment in this document. The whole range is now known as ‘Maclaines Warehouse’. This was the name painted on the north wall of Unit 1 in the early 1960s. The name given to the range in the 1970s list description in ‘North Warehouse’, to distinguish it from ‘South Warehouse’ (now a cookery school and bakery) on the opposite side of the Basin. The setting of the buildings is a highly significant area of historic Exeter. This includes material remains of the City’s industrial history as it related to the River Exe from Saxon times to the late 20th century when the character of the area became focussed on tourism, leisure, heritage and new housing taken advantage of waterside views. The most recent long-term use of the warehouses was for a maritime museum that closed in 1997. Since then the buildings have had short-term uses or been only partially used. At the time of the assessment, Units 1 and 2 were in partial use by the Topsham Brewery, Units 3 and 4 partly used for kayak storage and a gym and partly disused. There are proposals to bring both warehouses back into full use, requiring some amendments to the fabric and layout of the buildings. This Heritage Assessment was commissioned on the advice of Exeter City Council to assist with discussions about these amendments. The Brief The brief to Keystone was to follow the guidance of Exeter City Council’s Principal Project Manager (Heritage) in an e-mail of 22 August 2019 (see Appendix One). Methodology The approach taken has been a combination of observation and photographic recording combined with some documentary research, bearing in mind the suggested limitations of the latter in the guidance from Exeter City Council. In 2000 Keystone, working with Exeter Archaeology, produced a report ‘Archaeological, Historical and Conservation Study of the Exeter Canal Basin’, Exeter Archaeology Report No. 00.18, April 2000, for Exeter City Council 1 Estates Services. This study included the warehouse range with documentary research undertaken by Exeter Archaeology. This document updates and, where necessary, corrects the 2000 account of the warehouse range. Documentation for the City is unusually rich but is not catalogued in detail at the Devon Archives and Local Studies Service. A swift trawl for this Heritage Assessment found little additional to the documents cited in the 2000 report. Use has also been made of two archaeological watching briefs on adjacent land, provided to Keystone from the City’s Historic Environment Record. 2 - Statutory and non-statutory controls Listing The warehouse range was listed Grade 2 in 1974 when the buildings and canal basin were used by a maritime museum. The warehouses were called ‘North Warehouse (occupied by the Exeter Maritime Museum)’ and provided with a very short list description containing a number of inaccuracies. ‘CANAL BASIN 1. 1092 North Warehouse (occupied by The Exeter Maritime Museum) SX 9291 15/723 II 2. Typical mid C19 warehouse. Limestone and red brick. Various windows, casements. Two storeys. Hipped slate roof’. In fact Units 1, 3 and 4 are 1830s and 3-storey, Units 3 and 4 are largely built of local purplish volcanic stone. Unit 2 is 1901 and 2-storey but with 3 tiers of openings. Conservation Area The warehouse range is sited in Exeter’s ‘Riverside’ Conservation Area. This has a City Council Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan of 2005. The Basin is described as ‘of great historical importance, although has suffered from under-use of its listed warehouse buildings since the Maritime Museum closed in the early 1990s.’ Also directly relevant to the warehouse range is the following: ‘All of the historic buildings that surround the basin are of value both internally and externally, and provide excellent opportunities for the regeneration of this important site and its continued development in the future of Exeter as a maritime city.’ The warehouse range is noted as ‘of central importance to the setting of the Canal Basin, lying as they do between it and the river’. The Canal Basin Masterplan In 2004 the City adopted the ‘Canal Basin Masterplan’, describing and illustrating how design principles should be implemented in the Canal Basin area. As it has turned out since, several recommendations for the setting of the warehouse range in that document have not been executed, e.g. a new building at its north end (where there is now the Topsham Brewery garden). A considerable gap was suggested between the south end of the range and any new building to south, to allow for views and pedestrian access between the Basin and the river. There is a now only a narrow fenced-off gap between the range and a new building to the south. However, the recommendations applied to the warehouse range in the Masterplan still stand. ‘Site J: Former Maritime Museum and Warehouse Buildings Uses • A mix of uses which involve minimal intervention to the fabric of the buildings is required. • Ground floor uses could include specialist retail, leisure or craft workshops. Upper 2 floors could include leisure, exhibition, office or craft workshop space. Architectural Design • No new openings will be permitted on the main elevations fronting the basin and river. A very limited number of openings may be permissible on the other elevations where they serve an essential requirement. • Some limited roof lighting may be permissible on internal roof pitches. • Existing loading doors and other features will remain intact. New works should incor- porate these features. • The impact of utilities including ventilation or ducting should be kept to the minimum and be as inconspicuous as possible.’ (Canal Basin Masterplan, 2004, p.10) 3 - Historical Development of the of the Setting The early history of the canal and the area in which the Basin was built is provided in summary in the 2000 report ‘Archaeological, Historical and Conservation Study of the Exeter Canal Basin’, Exeter Archaeology Report No. 00.18, April 2000 and not repeated here. 1830-1900 The warehouses are part of the early 19th century improvements to the infrastructure of the port of Exeter. By this period the trade in woollen cloth, which had been the basis of Exeter’s prosperity, had more or less finished, but other goods continued to be traded at the port. Access for vessels, which were getting larger in the period, was constrained by the silting up of the river and the canal, the canal first built in the 16th century but extended, deepened and widened in several phases in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Other difficulties were shortage of quay space and frequent flooding at the quay, which made loading and unloading ships hazardous. Dues on traded goods made up the bulk of the City’s income and this provid- ed a powerful motive for improvements. In 1819, James Green (1781-1849), who had been appointed general surveyor of the Devon county bridges roads, etc. in 1808, was asked to report on further improvements to the port. Green had been born in Birmingham, the son of a surveyor and apprenticed to John Rennie, who designed many bridges, canals, docks and warehouses. He worked with Rennie on the Plymouth Breakwater and settled in Devon aged 26, working on various schemes before his appointment as County surveyor. In addition to working for the county Green undertook many large engineering surveys and works in Somerset, Dorset, and Cornwall. He had experience of canals, having engineered the Bude Canal in Cornwall (1819-1823) and the Rolle Canal in North Devon (1823-1827).