25 High Street

Summary

House with possible ground floor shop, constructed during the late-C18 or early-C19, altered in the C20.

History

The town of Leominster traces its origins to the establishment of a religious house there during the C7 or earlier. The Saxon settlement endured repeated Viking raids and is recorded as a sizeable town in the Domesday Book (1086), with 27 households. In the early-C12, King Henry I established a Benedictine Priory in the town and granted a foundation charter for the town’s market. The town thrived throughout the later medieval period, despite periodic unrest due to its location in the border region. Leominster wool was prized across Europe and bestowed considerable wealth upon the town. The town centre retains many medieval and early-modern buildings; secular buildings are timber framed while surviving Priory buildings are constructed of local sandstone. The town centre retains an essentially medieval street pattern, with long, narrow burgage plots fronting the north-south spine road of Broad Street-High Street-South Street, and Corn Square (the historic market place) lying to the east of the High Street. The remains of the Priory, dissolved in 1539, lie to the north-east of the town centre. The town remained a prominent local centre into the C18 and C19. During this period, many timber-framed buildings replaced (or refronted) by brick buildings with Classical elevations. Many houses in the town centre were partially converted to commercial use and equipped with shopfronts during the later-C19 and C20.

25 High Street was constructed during the late-C18 or early-C19 probably as a house with commercial premises on the ground floor. The first-floor sash windows were replaced in the late-C19. A new timber shopfront was installed in the late-C20. The building is currently (2022) in use as a shop on the ground floor with dwellings above. The ground-floor retail unit is combined with that at 27 High Street, an unlisted late-C19 building to the south.

Details

House with possible ground floor shop, constructed during the late-C18 or early-C19, altered in the C20.

MATERIALS: the building is of red brick in Flemish bond with a timber shop front to the principal, west elevation, and stucco window heads and cills. The roof covering is slate.

PLAN: the building is arranged on a rectangular plan with shorter elevations to the west and east. The main entrance and principal elevation are to the west onto High Street, with the rear elevation facing a yard accessed from Victoria Street to the south. A passageway (Ironmongers Lane) connects this yard to the High Street between numbers 23 and 25.

EXTERIOR: the building is of three storeys across two bays under a pitched roof. The late-C20 ground-floor shopfront has panelled timber stall risers and pilasters and large fixed windows, with a canted entrance containing a glazed door and plain over light, and a deep, plain fascia board over. The shopfront is contiguous with that at number 27. Above, the first and second floors each carry a pair of timber sash windows with rusticated stucco flat-arched heads and stucco cills. The first-floor windows have two-over-two glazing with horns while the second-floor windows have four-over-eight glazing and may be original. Above, there is a moulded timber eaves. On the ground floor of the rear (east) elevation is a wide opening under a segmental arch containing a pair of plank doors and a blocked over light above. To the north is a narrow, two-pane sash with horns under a segmental-arched head. On the first floor are a pair of eight-over-eight glazed timber sashes with timber surrounds and stucco cills under segmental-arched heads. There are two windows on the second floor. In the southern bay there is a tripartite window set flush with the brickwork under a flat-arched head, with a central, six-over-six glazed sash flanked by two-over-two glazed sashes. In the north bay is a six-pane timber casement with a segmental-arched head and stucco cill.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

459741

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Brooks, A, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Herefordshire, (2012), 442-443, 453.

Other
OS Map 25” (1885 edn), Herefordshire XII.15.
OS Map 25” (1927 edn) Herefordshire XII.15.

End of official list entry

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