Details
CHESTER CITY (IM)
SJ4066SE BRIDGE STREET AND ROW
595-1/4/53 (West side)
10/01/72 Nos.48 & 50 Street and Nos.48, 50 &
52 Row (Three Old Arches)
(Formerly Listed as:
BRIDGE STREET
Nos 48 & 50 Street & Nos 50 & 52 Row)
GV I
An undercroft and town house, with No.52 Street (qv), now with
Nos 44 & 46 Street and Row (qv) a department store. c1200,
early to mid C14, late C18, C19 and C20. Sandstone and brick,
painted; grey slate roofs hipped to fronts, ridges at
right-angle to the street.
EXTERIOR: 4 storeys including undercroft and Row levels.
Features of special interest are the 3 stone arches, probably
the earliest identified shopfront in England, at front of
No.48 and the great hall across both street numbers, the
largest in the Row buildings of Chester; No.52 Street is on
the site of the former medieval service wing.
No.48: Three Old Arches: the shopfront to the street is C19
and C20 with central entrance, display window of one pane
north and a 4-pane flush sash, south; openings have
mid-to-late C19 cases with a cornice above on 6 brackets. The
piers of the 3 arches pass through undercroft, altered, and
Row storey. The Row front has 4 piers, chamfered front and
back, and 3 round arches chamfered to front; the spandrels,
flush to front and with voussoirs chamfered to front only, are
less than half the pier-thickness and supported the base-plate
of the former timber-framed upper structure. Plain cast-iron
stick balusters and rail to Row front in each archway;
consistent with the early dating, there is no stallboard;
granolithic Row walk; the rendered wall to rear of Row has a
flush sash of 8;12;8 panes with shutters on gudgeon hinges, a
flush 12-pane sash and a door of 6 margined panels; a massive
beam across the Row, north, and an exposed oak beam, south;
plastered ceiling; at the north end of the Row modern double
doors lead to No.50. The third and fourth storeys are brick,
with flush quoins at corner; 3 flush sashes to the third
storey have painted stone sills and gauged brick heads with
flush keystones; the fourth storey has a tripartite sash of
4;12;4 panes, removed for repair when inspected; plain coped
parapet.
No.50 has rendered plinth, wood pilasters, central entrance, a
1-pane window to each side and a cornice on shaped brackets.
The upper storeys are brick. The Row is enclosed; 2
nearly-flush 16-pane sashes with painted stone sills and
cambered brick heads; the third storey has 2 similar sashes;
the fourth storey has a tripartite 4;12;4 pane sash removed
for repair when inspected; plain stone coping. The rear of Nos
48 & 50 have C20 extensions.
INTERIOR: the undercroft of No.48 has cast-iron columns in
place of two 2-centred double-chamfered arches on an octagonal
central pier, removed c1900; No.50 retains the
slightly-pointed early-to-mid C14 arch on shallow-moulded
half-octagon piers; the pier-bases are below present floor
level, with a C18-C19 rock-cut cellar beneath. The Row storey
contains substantial elements of the C14 stone hall, parallel
with the street; the east and north walls, with much masonry
intact, establish dimensions of 12.4m north to south by 8.88m
east to west. The east wall has the 2-centred archway of the
front opening to the former screens passage, south, with roll
and hollow mouldings on the outer side and a square order
rebated under a segmental relieving arch on the hall side,
with vertical grooves, east, for the former buttery partition
and west for the screen; the adjacent archway, probably
formerly to a stair, is narrow, 2-centred, chamfered to the
hall but plain to the outer side, under a chamfered relieving
arch; immediately north a chamfered segmental-arched opening,
formerly to the shop; by the north corner a fourth archway,
probably formerly to a private room associated with the shop;
the archway chamfers have pyramidal stops. A C16 open
fireplace with moulded bressumer is central on the north wall,
its position suggesting a possibly earlier origin, now
contains a C19 cast-iron range; a cambered oak
inglenook-bressumer on the south wall; now plastered, the
south and west walls are probably post-medieval.
No individual features of special interest are visible in the
third or fourth storeys.
(Chester Rows Research Project: Harris R: Archive, Bridge
Street West: 1989-).
Listing NGR: SJ4053566121
