Compton House in Liverpool started life as the world’s first department store, became an hotel and is now a Marks & Spencer outlet. And its renovation this year by Burnaby Stone Care has been recorded in rhyme by Roger McGough.

Compton House, currently the Marks & Spencer shop in Liverpool, lays claim to being the home of the oldest department store in the world, having been built by the American J R Jeffrey in 1865, five years earlier than Bon Marche in Paris.

It is a grand, Grade II listed building that has been harshly treated, with its original entrance and ground floor stonework being hacked off in the early 1970s to accommodate the modern shop front.

Some of the damage has, however, been corrected this year and stonework reinstated in a major restoration project carried out by Manchester specialists Burnaby Stone Care,

who have been celebrating their 40th anniversary this year.

The conservation architects on the project were Purcell Miller Tritton, who have an office in Liverpool, and the main contractors were Wates Retail.

The work has even been recorded in verse by Liverpool poet Roger McGough (once, appropriately enough, with the band The Scaffold), who cut a ribbon with store manager Julie

Ridley in October to mark the completion of seven months’ work (although it was carried out while the shop remained open) and invite customers to join the celebrations with a complimentary glass of champagne.

The project involved extending the store into four adjacent units and opening up the first floor of the five-storey building, incorporating a restaurant with views over the city.

Burnaby Stone Care were tasked with the restoration of the historic façades of the original building constructed of a sandstone from a quarry in Warrington that is no longer operational. Best match for replacement stone was considered to be from Peakmoor Quarry, operated by Block Stone.

The stone is buff but some of it has wilder pink incursions and is sold as Wild Pink. It was this that was selected for Compton House, the stone going to masonry company B D Brookes in Yorkshire to be worked.

Elton Tudor, who took over Burnaby Stone Care from founder Tony Bannister in 2006, told NSS: “The building had suffered over the years from the usual environmental attacks, unsympathetic repair techniques and overly

abrasive cleaning methods.

“It had also endured the brutal removal of approximately 75 linear metres of decorative cornice, dentil moulds and the

carved adornments to the two impressive oriel windows, to make way for more fashionable granite cladding.”

Or, as Burnaby’s Contracts Manager Mel Spencer put it: “As

the granite was stripped away we saw all the features on the stone had been gunned away. Everyone was surprised at the damage caused in the name of modernisation.”

Elton: “The technical challenges we faced were compounded by a very tight programme of works and immovable completion date.”

The completion date may have been immovable but only after it had been brought forward by three months, which put pressure on all concerned, especially Tony Barratt, who was producing the drawings for Burnaby Stone Care, and the stone suppliers. On site, work sometimes continued out of hours and throughout the weekends to keep it on schedule. And all the time work was made just a little more difficult because the store was still open and Burnaby had to use dust suppression techniques using water and vacuum attachments to the grinders.

Elton says: “Towards the end we even got to the stage where

we were picking up the stone in our own lorries and delivering it overnight so it was ready for an early start in the morning.

“Schedules were worked out so that we had to finish a particular area at 1pm, say, so the window fitters could

move in. There’s been a lot of collaboration between M&S, the main contractor and ourselves.

“Luckily, Burnaby have been helped by a very attentive conservation officer and backed by a team of specialists who can cover all aspects of the restoration process.

“This has included producing working drawings, stone procurement and manufacture, site fixing and implementation of various cleaning and repair methods. This has ensured an

incredibly fast-tracked approach that has been achieved without compromise.”

The largest part of the job was repairing the stonework and replacing those elements that had been lost, especially at first floor level, where all detail had simply been removed to create a flat surface for the modern shop facia

to be attached to.

This was reinstated, including features such as the carved eagles commissioned from John Hargreaves pictured left, the drawings for which all had to be approved before the work

commenced.

“We have done higher value projects, but it’s usually 50-50 cleaning and repairs. M&S in Liverpool was 90% stonework,” says Elton.

The work did involve cleaning the facia and for most of it, the Doff super heated water system from Stonehealth was used, although poultices and chemical paint strippers were

needed in some areas.

Mel Spencer is proud of the fact that the facade does not now look as if it has had much work carried out on it, because the unsympathetic cementitious repairs and stone inserts carried out piecemeal over the years certainly

did create an unsightly patchwork before Burnaby started their programme.

He says all the previous inappropriate repairs had to be removed. Holes smaller than 25mm were filled with lime mortars and some of the carvings were repaired with mortar, but most of the work involved stone indents. “It’s

worked. You can’t see them,” says Mel, who took a week off to recover from the forced pace of the project once it had been completed.

Although there has been a lot of work carried out on the building, the aim has been to take a largely conservation approach and allow the building to continue to tell its story.

Elton concludes: “M&S demanded a lot of Wates and they demanded a lot from their subcontractors, but the way I look at it: if you can work for them and satisfy all their requirements you can work for anyone.”