Summary
C18 buildings merged and extended with an early-C19 building range (south) into shops and residences. Further alterations from C19 to C21. Baroque style frontage to Silver Street.
Reasons for Designation
27-28 Silver Street, C18 buildings merged and extended with an early-C19 building range to the front (south), is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* for the high-quality craftmanship of the relief-carved ribbons of Bacchus heads, fox heads, hung dead fowl, fruit and flowers on the early- to mid-C19 shopfront, denoting its original use as a gunsmith's premises
Historic interest:
* with C18 origins and an early-C19 front range, it forms one of the key historic buildings on the north side of Silver Street, which became dominated by large bank buildings in the later C19 and early C20.
* the building has strong group value with a number of other listed buildings, including the Grade II* Old White Hart Inn to its rear, several former banks, and Hull Charterhouse opposite, which together enhance and impart character upon the historic urban streetscape of Silver Street.
History
27-28 Silver Street originated as two C18 houses that subsequently merged to form the rear range of an early-C19 building fronting Silver Street. From the C19 the building was historically numbered 26-28 Silver Street and was arranged as two shops on the ground floor with a recessed porch at its western end providing access to an entrance door leading to a shared staircase to the upper floors and The Old White Hart Inn entry passage. A newspaper advert in 1810 describes the building as three dwelling houses and shops.
Number 27 was established as a gunmaker’s business in the early C19, and between the early- to mid-C19 a bespoke finely carved shopfront enriched with carved bacchus heads, fruit, garlands, fox heads and dead fowl was added to signal the shop’s purpose. It remained in use as a gunsmiths until the 1870s. Number 28 was in use as a saddler's
From the 1830s the drapers' firm of Kirk, Bolton and Brown had its shop premises on the ground floor of the neighbouring number 29 Silver Street. Number 26 formed t business' warehouse and number 28 was a dwelling house for the associated Brown family. In 1852 numbers 28 and 29 were purchased by Macpherson and Company, another drapery business, and by the early 1860s the ground-floor shops of numbers 28 and 29 were amalgamated into a single shop floor, with the shop assistants living in the upper floors of number 28.
In the C20 the building remained as shops on the ground floor but offices replaced dwellings on the upper floors. During the mid to late-C20 the original shopfront to number 27 was reconfigured to extend across both numbers 27 and 28. In the 1990s alterations were undertaken to adapt the building as a public house, and in the mid-2000s the upper floors were altered from offices to six apartments, with the removal and replacement of a staircase and installation of partition walling. The ground-floor shops are now (2023) commercial premises.
Details
C18 buildings merged and extended with an early-C19 building range (south) into shops and residences. Further alterations from C19 to C21. Baroque style frontage to Silver Street.
MATERIALS: brick with stucco front, rendered rear, and slate roof.
PLAN: north-south aligned, polygonal on plan.
EXTERIOR: the building is of three-storeys with a basement and attic, under a coped barrel and partially-pitched roof with brick end stacks.
The stuccoed four-bay front (south) elevation has two shop frontages with recessed entrances and a recessed porch at its western end comprising an entrance door to number 26 and an entry passage to the Old White Hart Inn. Finely carved wooden early-C19 shopfronts have three enriched pilasters that rise to scrolled consoles with ball finials to support a thin moulded entablature (with egg and dart moulding extant above the recessed alley and entrance porch). Each pilaster has a moulded concave panel, but the eastern pilasters retain shell ornamentation to the plinth and carved enrichment running between the pilaster and scrolled console. There are four scrolled consoles with carved enrichment across the shopfronts, and the second console from the west is without its pilaster. This has been repositioned below a replica carved console to the east end of the building to extend the shopfront across the full elevation. The carved enrichment comprises a bacchus head to the console with fruit and foliage falling from its mouth down to a fox head, dead fowl and floral garlands. Number 28 contains a late-C19 central entrance shopfront with a chamfered stone plinth, single-pane shop windows supported on slender moulded stanchions, a recessed and gated entrance porch and a substantial late-C20 fascia. Number 27 contains an early-C20 entrance shopfront with a tiled shop riser supporting a square bay with single-glazed panes with transom and top-lights.
The upper floors comprise a four-bay quoined façade with a decorated cornice to the first floor and moulded string band to the second floor. The first floor has four paired windows, each with a moulded surround and scrolled brackets supporting a moulded and ornamented flat pediment. The second floor has a matching arrangement of windows with eared and moulded window surrounds. The windows contain late-C19 one-over-one sashes, apart from the first floor of number 28, which has late-C20 single pane window with top-lights. Rising above the second floor are two substantial moulded acanthus leaf consoles supporting a projecting moulded eaves on scrolled brackets. Above are four round-headed dormers with two-light transom casements, and in the centre a smaller C20 box dormer.
The rear (north) three-storey elevation was originally two separate early to late-C18 buildings. The western two-bay elevation is set substantially further north and has a ground-floor entrance with a moulded arched door hood with shell ornamentation and a sash window to the east (partially concealed behind a brick courtyard). Above are two wide flat-arched first-floor windows and two narrower second-floor windows, all with eight-over-eight sashes. Rising above is a slender eaves supported on block brackets with two box-dormers with C20 casement windows set into a barrel arched slate roof with stone coping to the east.
The eastern two-bay elevation is concealed behind an outshut and has two flat stone lintel windows on each floor containing eight-over-eight sashes. Above is a moulded and bracketed eaves with a shallow pitched roof.
The return elevations abut number 21 (west) and number 29 to 30 (east), with a brick rounded coped gable to the east and rendered gable to the west.
