2-8, ST HELENS SQUARE, 2, DAVYGATE

Details

YORK

SE6051NW ST HELEN'S SQUARE
1112-1/28/936 (South East side)
Nos.2-8 (Even)

GV II

Includes: No.2 DAVYGATE.
Bank, restaurant, shops and offices. 1929-30. By TP Bennett.
MATERIALS: red brick in Flemish bond and sandstone ashlar,
with ashlar dressings; shopfronts of ashlar with bronze window
frames: parapet of brick panels, broken by balustraded
lengths, between piers of brick or ashlar, with moulded stone
coping. Roof of Westmorland slates, hipped at each end, with
brick stacks, and pilastraded octagonal cupola with lead ogee
cap, surmounted by wrought-iron finial and weathervane, in
centre.
EXTERIOR: 3-storeys; 9 bays to St Helen's Square, 9 bays to
Davygate, 4 bays to Coney Street, and tripartite curved corner
bays. Upper floors to St Helen's Square articulated by giant
Ionic pilasters, the centre bay treated as frontispiece with
coupled columns and pilasters supporting plain frieze and
moulded modillion cornice which breaks forward over outer
bays, and broken central pediment with garlanded cartouche of
York City arms in tympanum. Shopfronts of plain pilasters with
moulded bases and capitals, and broad fascia beneath moulded
cornice on triglyph brackets.
No.2 has panelled double doors in corner bay, in architrave of
slender pilaster jambs beneath fluted frieze and moulded
cornice, and pediment formed of volutes and palmette;
overlight divided by squat pilasters with palmette bases.
Similar door at left end. Small-pane fixed light windows made
tripartite by pilasters beneath fluted friezes and moulded
cornices, and transom lights divided as door overlights;
risers of moulded raised panelling between fluted pilaster
strips. Shopfront to No.4 altered. Entrance to Nos 6 and 8 in
Davygate return is glazed open metalwork panel of geometric
design in brass surround, with glass and bronze canopy above.
Subsidiary glass door to St Helen's Square front, at right end
of plate glass windows with top panels of coloured glass:
lower part of windows protected by balustrade of open
metalwork panels similar to that in main door. Coloured glass
panels in canopy and window heads are leaded and of abstracted
leaf trail design. Shopfront returns on Davygate front and
incorporates service passage gate and screen of square section
railings at left end.
Frontispiece on St Helen's Square has tripartite sash windows
on first and second floors. First floor window has keyed Gibbs
surround beneath moulded cornice on consoles; second floor
centre window is radial-glazed in round-arched keyed and eared
architrave, with moulded sill over shaped apron. Elsewhere
first floor windows generally are 18-pane sashes with flat

arches of gauged brick; on second floor 12-pane sashes with
tiled sills over raised brick aprons. In corner bays and some
others, first floor windows have triple-keyed architraves with
broken pedimented hoods on scrolled consoles, and second floor
windows with moulded stone sills over moulded aprons.
INTERIORS: not inspected.
(Bartholomew City Guides: Hutchinson J and Palliser DM: York:
Edinburgh: 1980-: 157; ).


Listing NGR: SE6018651934

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

464553

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Hutchinson, J, Palliser, D M, Bartholomew City Guides in York, (1980), 157

End of official list entry

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