187-193 High Street West, Liverpool House

The property first appears as a townhouse on a plan of 1826. Stone walled basement with a flagstone floor and blocked lightwell survive and early brickwork onto Press Lane, bearing a street sign from that period. By 1855 a brick stable block with stone floor and loft had been added. The original sandstone corbel and a later iron turnguard survive. At the end of the nineteenth century the building was converted into sales rooms for W.C. Thompson & Co. The extant row of buildings were interconnected and the frontage remodelled. It was later converted into Liverpool House Department Store, comprising of three tall nineteenth century buildings with a low wide classically styled building with four larged arched windows in the centre. The glazed shop front, iron column grid and windows survive behind the rendered and timber boarded shopfront. There is a "Liverpool House" tiled slab in the doorway. In the twentieth century, some of the buildings were demolished to make a car park and the modern render and timber board shop front was added, and plywood boarding over floors and walls. Liverpool House is widely remembered by Sunderland residents. A Santa's Grotto was designed and constructed in the basement by Evan Oxenham in the 1950s. Liverpool House was taken over by Style Furnishings in recent times.