Conservation Area: Bridge Street (Warrington) Conservation Area (104)

The Bridge Street conservation area as originally designated encompasses the whole of Bridge Street with its fine examples of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century commercial and ecclesiastical buildings with outstanding wide-spread use of terra-cotta ornamentation. Bridge Street was widened in the late nineteenth century and many of the buildings on the west side date from the subsequent period of reconstruction and thus form a unified group. The east side shows more variation in architectural style but also contains many buildings dating from the late Victorian and Edwardian era. On both sides of the street the conservation area extends beyond the Bridge Street properties to include their original building plots which extend backwards to Barbould Street to the west and close to the Market frontage to the east. At its northern boundary the conservation area includes all of Market Gate excluding the Golden Square entrance block. To the west and east properties along both Sankey Street and Buttermarket Street mark the origins of the present cruciform street pattern of these original eighteenth and nineteenth century commercial streets. The section of Sankey Street included within the conservation area contains fine groups of buildings dating from the mid nineteenth century and Holy Trinity Church dating from the eighteenth century with its fine sandstone front and clock tower of 1862 which is a major landmark in the town. Beyond here at the junction with Cairo Street the boundary turns south to include the east side of Cairo Street with its attractive brick and stone built chapel, graveyard with trees and adjacent former school. At its southern boundary at Bridge Foot the conservation area extends over the River Mersey to include Warrington Bridge. In 1995 the conservation area was extended to include the former vaulted warehouse buildings at the rear of the Woolworth’s store in Sankey Street and to the east of the Cairo Street group. Then in 1996 it was extended again to include a group of properties facing the chapel on Cairo Street in recognition of the fact that this would provide for completeness of the character of the conservation area.