BOXPARK Liverpool
BOXPARK Liverpool at Cains Brewery, Liverpool
Our heritage team advised on the creation of a new BOXPARK site, housed within for a former canning warehouse at the former Cain’s Brewery site in Liverpool.
The site was a large, unlisted steel warehouse dating from around the 1980s, formerly used as a canning plant and now operating as a vintage and antiques market. It was not within a conservation area, but lied close to two Grade II listed buildings: Grapes Public House and Higson’s Brewery on Stanhope/Grafton Street, and Nos. 45–51 Greenland Street opposite on Parliament Street.
The wider area had a strong industrial history associated with brewery. Cains Brewery was founded in 1858 by Robert Cain, a significant Liverpool entrepreneur, and the listed brewery buildings are valued for their ornate red brick and terracotta architecture, historic brewing use, and contribution to Liverpool’s late nineteenth-century industrial character. Nos. 45–51 Greenland Street also has architectural and historic interest as a substantial Victorian warehouse.
We set out that although the proposed site formed part of the wider brewery site, it did not itself contribute to the special interest of the nearby listed buildings. We argued that the setting had already changed considerably, with modern warehouses, temporary structures, food and drink uses, offices, residential blocks and the busy Parliament Street corridor shaping the current townscape.
We supported the proposals, which involved converting the warehouse into a food hall with central dining space, mezzanine seating/bar areas, toilets, new external cladding, curtain walling to Parliament Street, retaining rooflights, signage, lighting, terrace areas, shipping-container seating, planting, fire escapes, plant, lifts, cycle storage and related service facilities.
We concluded that the development would have a neutral heritage impact, because there would be no increase in height, no fundamental change to the relationship with the listed buildings, no harm to the informal semi-industrial setting of the brewery, and no impact on key views of the listed brewery from Grafton Street and Stanhope Street.
Client: Boxpark Limited
Architect: BDP