A. Collie Warehouse, Aytoun Street

The Grand Hotel was originally built for Alexander Collie, a notorious shipping merchant and cost £42,000 exclusive of machinery in the basement, which added a further £10,000. Collie had begun his South American business in a warehouse in Stevenson Square and then moved to Portland Street, where he entered the India and China export trade. His exploitation of cotton prices and embargoes during the US civil war, however, enabled him to make considerable profits.  He was thus able to erect extensive premises in the most coveted business area of the city. The shipping business conducted required facilities for the reception, storage and making-up of goods.  Such a warehouse could receive, examine and pack more than 100,000 bales a year, equivalent in length to 200,000,000 yards or more than four times the circumference of the globe.

The block facing onto Aytoun Street, was detached on three sides with an exterior of Darley stone and brick.  On the fourth side, the loading gateway passed through the side and extended the whole height of the building.  As carts and lurries were forbidden to load bales onto the street, these hovels enabled the carts to enter from one side, Load and exit from the other. Hoists then carried the goods to various departments. The lower cellar contained the machinery, two thirty horse engines and two forty horse boilers. Gearing and hydraulic pumps were connected to the packing presses above.  To augment the gas lighting, thick plate glass pavement lights were positioned above white tiled slopes, thus allowing light to be reflected into the subterranean area. Above, the upper cellar was supported on a brick arched floor and was devoted exclusively to packing.  The powerful presses arranged round the sides compressed the bales before they were bound and dispatched. Whilst most of the foreign business was transacted in the Exchange, visitors were invited to inspect goods in the sample rooms.  Entering by the main, red granite entrance, such a client would find the oak fitted main counting house and offices on the principal floor. On the upper floors, each department had its own counting house, warerooms and sample rooms. Each demanded light for inspection and necessitated a 30 feet by 20 feet light well to pierce the building.  Goods were then arranged on mahogany counters below the windows and around the void.

The warehouse operated for less than a decade.  A spectacular bankruptcy occurred on 16 June 1875, when the firm Collie and Co. of Manchester & London collapsed with liabilities estimated at about £3 million, Alexander Collie, the head of the firm, subsequently fled to Spain.

The building of which we this week give a perspective view and plans of two floors was erected a few years ago for a firm having a large American and Indian business, on a plot of ground containing 2,!75 square yards in the best business part of the city, having two frontages to main streets and one to a back street, the fourth side being engaged. The warehouse consists of sub-basement and cellar floors over the whole area, below the street level and five stories above, seven in all. The sub-basement floor is laid with Val de Travers asphalte, and contains, besides storage room for goods, 21 pair of magnificent steam engines, enclosed by a partition of pitch pine framing, glazed with plate glass, the boilers, hydraulic pumps, and all the shafting and gearing to work the hoists, cranes, &c., the engineer is thus enabled to approach every portion of the machinery without creeping under floors or into passage-ways. The upper collar, on a brick-arched floor, contains the packing arrangements, consisting of several powerful hydraulic presses and is in connection with the warehouse floors above from which the different goods to be packed are delivered by means of the hoists, while the packed bales and cases are lifted by cranes up to the cartways marked C on the plan, to be taken away to the different railway stations for shipment. A glance at the ground plan will show the extensive arrangements for reception and despatch of goods ; the main cartway is so arranged that the carts, lurries, etc., can enter at one end and after delivering or receiving their goods can leave by the opposite exit. The main entrance to the counting-house department is in the centre of one part, while entrances for goods and workpeople will be found near the loading-ways where marked B, The counting-house and private offices are arranged on the first floor, on an extensive scale, the rest of this floor as well as all the others being devoted to warerooms for the display or storage of various descriptions of goods. mostly calicoes of one description or another. On one of the upper floors is a kitchen and a dining-room for the principals as well as one for the employees ; the arrangements of the cloakrooms, lavatories, &c., are such as to secure good light and efficient ventilation.

The business conducted in such a warehouse consists of the reception, storage, packing and shipping to foreign countries of the commodities in which the firm deals, either by way of commission or on their own account, and at times when the firm buys largely in a favourable market, goods may have to be stored up for months till a. favourable turn of trade enables them to be shipped at a profit; thus at times such a building may be piled from floor to ceiling, I2ft. in height, from bottom to top, with piles of grey cloth or calico so closely packed as to leave barely passage room ; the floors have thus to be constructed of immense strength, a weight of from two to three hundred weight coming on to each superficial foot of floor, while for the purpose of running trucks about and carrying goods it is not desirable to place the columns very near together, thus the spaces or “ bays” formed by any four columns will measure about 14ft. by 12ft. The whole of the building not being required for the firm to which it belongs, a portion on the left is partitioned off by a temporary wall, not, however, shown on the plan; this portion has its separate entrance.

The exterior on the two main fronts and for a portion of the return side is faced with polished ashlar, mostly derived from the Darley Dale quarries of Sir Joseph Whitworth, Bart, the string course running above the upper cellar windows is of grey granite, as are also the dressings to the cart entrances, the main entrance door dressings are of polished red granite ; the whole of the windows are glazed with plate glass ; the counting-house, etc., fittings are in polished oak. Light, it may be mentioned, is obtained for the lower cellar or sub- basement by means of thick plate glass let into the footpath opposite each cellar window, below which is a sloping area or kind of shaft lined with white tiles, which reflect the light into this cellar, gas being of course used in addition. The general contract was executed by Messrs. Robert Neill & Sons, of Manchester, and the engines and machinery, cranes, hoists, and presses by Messrs. E. T. Bellhouse and Co., also of this city. [British Architect 14 January 1876 page 23]

Reference    Alyson Cooper Victorian Society Newsletter Summer 1983
Reference    Builder Vol XXVI No 1334 29 August 1868 Page 640
Reference    British Architect 14 January 1876 page 23 with double page View and Plans.