Commercial premises or showroom. Dated 1889. Red brick with stone dressings and terracotta decorative details, tiled roof. Rectangular building of 4 x 3 bays with canted corner entrance. Jacobean style. Single storey articulated by pilasters supporting a sculptured frieze. Doorway with arched head and fanlight. One, two and three-light mullion and transom windows to the Parsonage Street front. The Wellington Road front has two large plateglass windows divided by paired pilasters. The windows have removed two pilasters. Cornice, panelled parapet, aedicule with console supporters, swan – neck pediment and date over the doorway. Tall hipped roof. Very prominently sited and under restoration at the time of inspection.
Grade: II listed: 23rd March 1987 – Historic England
This is a building of some substance, decorated with terracotta work of the highest order, a striking yet diminutive landmark to the north of the town. Situated on a once busy commercial site, where it would have been surrounded by a plethora of retail, industrial and residential property.
My research has shown that its earliest recorded use was under the ownership of JE Jones manufacturing agent for ropes and cords, allied to the local hatting and cotton trades in 1907. Subsequently the base of John Roberts in 1910 – leather merchant, manufacturing belts, strapping and laces – the company also had premises nearby at 138 Heaton Lane.
It has latterly been in use as Topp’s Tiles, Gordon Ford and Little Amigos Discount Nursery Store – it is currently empty, shuttered and unloved on off at a rent of £1,833 per calendar month from Rightmove.
As Stockport continues to invest in and develop its town centre, it remains a more than somewhat sorry beacon of decline, an indicator that all too often architecture of local and historic importance, seems to have little or no place, in this thrusting modern milieu.
If passing, pause and reflect on the sense of permanence that imbues this building, in an all too impermanent world.
Modern Mooch 
Brilliant building but what a shame about it now. I went in it a few times when it was a tool shop in the mid-1980s. It was like a small version of Brian S. Pope’s. Vicmores was just up the road!
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For quite a while (late 1970s into the 1980s) it was the home of Gerald Bateson Ltd, a motor spares business. My dad used to work for him.
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the sculptured frieze contains the letters LJ. These initials are repeated in the terracotta decoration above the doorway arch. Does your research give any clues as to who they refer to? (Maybe an earlier member of the J.E. Jones family?)
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