Offices and Two Shops, 12 Mosley Street/Marble Street, Manchester

A building with an involved history not aided by the listing text. Contemporary references indicate that about 1894, the Mosley Street front and its corner return to Marble street were re-build in stone to the designs of Royle and Bennett. However, the rear part of the building at the junction of Marble Street and Back Mosley Street appears to have remained unaltered. see photograph of Marble Street about 1909 (MCL).  The Manchester Guardian noted:

The corner block No. 12, Mosley-street looks, with the sun upon it, bright and pleasant in the freshness of its new stone. How long will it be before the smoke and dirt are so engrained as to induce the wish that it was of washing material? The design, though not mean. is distinctly commonplace. At the best it is inoffensive, at least as to the Mosley-street front and part of the side. little way down the side street the stone changes to brick with objectionable suddenness. Here, too, advantage has not been taken of the dormers in the roof to get from them help towards a picturesque skyline. Nor are the chimneys made to contribute to what with a little more imagination and skill, yet again without more expense, might have been a marked improvement to Mosley-street. The important point, of name-boards that meet commercial needs and which yet form part of the architectural design has been left very much to chance and the tenant.

As shown on the Goad’s map of 1885 the length of the building had previously been divided into two units. That at the corner of Back Mosley Street, numbered 30 or 32 Marble Street was occupied by James Pilkington, beer retailer and George M’Connel dining rooms. On Mosley Street the ground floor of the building was occupied by the LNWR Parcels, Enquiry, Canvassing and Carting Office from about 1863 to 1886 while the upper floors were occupied by manufacturers, calico printers etc.

The re-building was completed in 1894, for at Christmas that year Frank Stanley Willoughby, beer and wine retailer, was in occupation of the new basement. Although numbered 12 Mosley Street, its entrance was in Marble Street. By the early twentieth century the rebuilt section of the building had been subdivided to form  6-7 offices on the upper floors with two shops occupying the ground floor. Photographs of the 1970s show the two shops remaining at ground floor, but a giant and unsightly advertising hoarding for Mother’s Pride Bread was erected across the frontage up to roof level. Following a period as a branch of Lloyds Bank, the building has now been totally refurbished into office space, with additional accommodation on the roof.

Reference        Manchester Guardian 18 June 1895; page 9 – recent architecture in Manchester
Archive            Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, GB127.M900/1/1/2/1/1002