Details
CHESTER CITY (IM)
SJ4066SE EASTGATE STREET AND ROW
595-1/4/173 (South side)
No.12 Street and No.12 Row
GV II
Undercroft shop, Row shop and ancillary accommodation. On site
of a former town house which had a C13-14 two-bay vaulted
undercroft, destroyed 1861 when rebuilt by G Williams of
Liverpool for Messrs Beckett and Co., drapers. Timber-framed
front with plaster panels; some sandstone; brick to rear;
banded tile roof with front gable abutting ridge parallel with
street.
EXTERIOR: undercroft, tall Row, third and fourth storeys and
attic. Central flight of 10 sandstone steps to the Row with,
to each side, a sandstone crosswall and a modern shopfront,
with 9 steps down to undercroft. Painted stone end-piers
matching those to No.10 Street (qv). Ornate quatrefoil-in
circle cast-iron railing to Row front and sides; ornamented
timber post above each side of steps; stepped and slightly
sloped stallboard 1.82m from front to back; faded gilt sign on
inner face of east end-pier SILKS, DRESS FABRICS, LINEN,
HOSIERY, GLOVES, FURS, GARNITURES, ARTICLES DE PARIS; terrazzo
Row walk, damaged, with mosaic border; modern shopfront of no
interest; patterned quadrant brackets to Row-top bressumer.
The third storey has a row of panels, largely hidden by
nameboard, between bressumer and a continuous window of 3;2;3
two-pane lights punctuated by a colonnette above each Row post
and paired colonnettes at ends; the window has a St Andrew's
cross, with a trefoil in each triangle, above each light; the
surfaces of the colonnettes are latticed, with capitals of C14
form. Brackets over the colonnettes carry the fourth storey
jetty-beam with ornate stopped chamfers; a row of 16
quatrefoil panels; four 2-pane sashes flanked by panels with
criss-cross bracing, between 2 small corner-balconies with
square posts and handrails on turned balusters. The ornate
jettied front gable has hollow-lozenge, St Andrew's cross and
rectangular small-framing, possibly false, marked and painted
in the plaster; 3 spirally-moulded colonnettes under a
mullioned window of four 2-pane sashes on a jettied sill-beam;
ornate head-beam, cusped bargeboards, end finials and central
drop-finial.
INTERIOR: the undercroft surfaces are covered in textured
plaster, but suggest that the sandstone sidewalls of the
medieval undercroft may in part survive. The Row shop has a
central row of cast-iron debased Doric columns carrying a
longitudinal cast-iron II beam. There is noted to be an ornate
cast-iron spiral stair, now concealed. The third storey
contains a row of 5 cast-iron columns, approximately
Corinthian. The upper storeys retain door architraves and
small-pane rear sash windows. The part of the east side of
No.10 Street visible from the fourth floor balcony of No.12
indicates that No.12 postdates No.10.
HISTORICAL NOTE: G Williams, the architect of this item is
probably the George Williams who designed No.33 Eastgate
Street (qv), now National Westminster Bank, in Classical style
1859-60.
(Journal of Chester Archaeological Society: Old Series:
Chester: 1858-1864: 410).
Listing NGR: SJ4056866274
