The Great Northern Warehouse is the former railway goods warehouse of the Great Northern Railway, it was granted Grade II* listed building status in 1974.
Refurbished into a leisure complex in 1999.
The building is at the junction of Deansgate and Peter Street.
Once upon time in 1807 it wasn’t there at all.
By 1824 it still wasn’t here, though the area had been further developed.
Construction began in1885.
The warehouse was built to be fireproof with a steel frame on a rectangular plan, 267 ft long by 217 ft wide and five storeys high, with twenty seven windows on the east and west sides and seventeen windows on the north and south ends. All four sides have friezes lettered in white brick reading Great Northern Railway Company’s Goods Warehouse. It was built above the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal, and a dock was constructed beneath to allow goods to be transferred to and from canal barges via shafts and a complex system of haulage using hydraulic power.
The building could hold a total of one hundred and fifty goods wagons across two of its levels, with capacity for a further 500 in its sidings. Its construction effectively wiped out the district of Alport Town, which had included 300 houses, and – Over 800 men were employed on the site. Twenty five million bricks, 50,000 tons of concrete, 12,000 tons of mild steel and sixty five miles of rivets were used in its construction.
So by 1900 it appeared on the map.
We have previously visited the low multi-level car park beneath the Odeon.
So having time on my hands on the way to somewhere else, I took a look around the rest of the complex.
Here it is from the air in 2006.
Photo: Sean Gallagher
Great Northern is perfectly positioned in the heart of the city centre as the ideal place to eat, drink, meet and play. You will find a cinema, boutique bowling, restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, shops and the biggest range of estate agents in the city centre, all alongside our public square.
I found a mesmerising series of corridors and doors, defunct lifts and a plethora of pin-pong players, along with several leak catching buckets.
What will you find?
In November 2022, Trilogy Real Estate and Hong Kong–based Peterson Group brought forward updated plans for a mixed-use redevelopment of the site.
The historic warehouse will be given a new lease of life as office space, looking over a tree filled Square. Alongside this, the 1990’s cinema and car park building will be repurposed to create 746 apartments and reimagined pedestrianised retail streets.
Image: SimpsonHaugh
