HERITAGE Lottery Fund's North West office has relocated from 82 King Street in Manchester to Carver's Warehouse, the Town Centre Securities-owned building in Piccadilly.
New and old
HLF moved in August to a 2, 012 sq ft office on the lower ground floor of Carver's Warehouse in Dale Street.
TCS completed the renovation of 22,000 sq ft Carvers Warehouse in 2008. The building is now home to Marketing Manchester, Stockley Broster O'Malley, Four23, Harris Partnership, BWB Consulting and G-Star Raw. Digital industries co-working group TechHub will open its first Manchester base there in November.
Eastern side of the building showing the shipping arches - see yellow box below
Suzanne Gallagher, asset manager at Town Centre Securities said: "Carver's Warehouse seems a very fitting location for the Heritage Lottery Fund to be based. It's great to have an organisation here who appreciates historic buildings. This is high quality office space, minutes from both Piccadilly Station and the Northern Quarter. We're extremely proud of the Carver's Warehouse conversion which retains its original character. It's a prominent building in this part of the Piccadilly Basin and we hope HLF will be very happy here."
InsideCarver's Warehouse was built in 1806 of millstone grit to serve the Rochdale Canal. On the east side it originally allowed the canal into the building through arches so goods could be transferred from the building. The initials WC are visible on the building, perhaps because William Crossley was the designer. The building was one of the first to use cast iron columns to support the floors throughout. Hidden in its depths is a breast-shot water wheel of cast iron and timber from 1824.
Since there is no millstone grit present under Manchester but plenty 13 miles away on the Pennines above Rochdale its tempting to think that the choice of material was an emotional one, reflecting the name of the canal.
The building was beautifully converted and enlarged on the western side by Stockley Broster O'Malley (one of the present tenants) for Town Centre Securities in 2004 for £4.5m.
