Summary
Crescent terrace of shops with accommodation over, late C18 to early C19, and former bank chambers of 1900.
History
Selby dates to the Anglo-Saxon period, when it was known as Seletun (old Scandinavian for ‘sallow tree settlement’) and was referred to by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 779. A charter of about 1030 called it Seleby and about 1050 it was Selbi. King Henry I was born in Selby in 1068 and, a year later, Benedict, a French monk from Auxerre, obtained permission from King William to establish an Abbey. The Market Place has existed since the early C14. By the C15, Selby had developed thriving trade links along the East Coast and with the Low Countries. Selby Abbey succumbed to dissolution in 1539, and the core of the building became the parish church in 1618.
Selby’s commercial importance grew dramatically following the opening of the Selby Canal in 1778, becoming a notable inland port; however, after the building of Goole Docks in 1826, it suffered a very rapid decline. The town’s fortunes recovered in 1834, with the opening of the Leeds and Selby Railway, and by the early C20, witnessed a growth in several industries served by the railways and river traffic, including flour milling, malting, oilseed milling and cattle feed production. In 1983, coal production commenced from the Selby Coalfield. Shipbuilding ended ten years later, and coal mining ceased in 2004. Since then, there has been a gradual reduction in the traditional industries, although some remain.
Work started on the construction of The Crescent in the mid-1790s as a speculative development by James Audus the Elder (1752-1809), a prominent ship-owner, and was inspired by Lansdowne Crescent, Bath. It was designed by his son James, an amateur architect, and was not completed until after his father's death. It was designed as a fashionable sweep of commercial properties with accommodation above, facing in an arc onto the close of Selby Abbey and the Market Place. The Crescent formed an elegant entry into Selby, linking the marketplace to the new toll bridge (1793) via New Street, and straddling the junction with Park Street/Bawtry Road. A former bank chambers and numbers 7 to 14 occupy the western half of The Crescent, they all had service ranges and some had workshops and stable blocks to the rear. The 1890-1891 Ordnance Survey town plan shows the bank chambers occupying the eastern corner of The Crescent with the service range to the rear, facing onto Park Street. A new decorative ground-floor bank frontage was installed by the National and Provincial Bank in 1900 and, by 1924, the upper floors were occupied by an auctioneer's business. Number 14, occupying the opposite end from the bank, was originally a five-bay, three-storey residence built above two shops. A central decorative round-arched doorway leading to the first and second-floor accommodation was flanked by the two ground-floor shop units. This property, including the two shops, was merged with number 13 in the 1960s to form a three-storey department store. Numbers 7 to 12 have remained as commercial properties with accommodation space over. The building was formerly listed as: Bank Chambers National Westminster Bank, Statutory addresses – 12a, 13 and 14, The Crescent, 7-12, The Crescent, Bank Chambers, 2, Park Street, and National Westminster Bank, The Crescent.
Details
Crescent terrace of shops with accommodation over, late 18 to early C19, and former bank chambers of 1900.
MATERIALS: fair-faced brick construction with Welsh slate-clad pitched roof.
PLAN: a three-storey crescent terrace of eight properties with sub-rectangular plans.
EXTERIOR: the main elevation is of 22 bays and faces roughly north-by-north-east. The individual properties within the terrace have two, three and five-bay elevations with a continuous first-floor sill band, and a mixture of both two-light and multi-paned sash windows with keyed raised keystones and canted voussoirs. The roof is hipped to each of the end properties and is obscured by a continuous coped parapet, which returns around the two side elevations at either end of The Crescent, and is drained by a mixture of cast-iron and plastic rainwater goods. Brick-built ridge chimney stacks are situated over the party walls of each property.
The former bank chambers occupy the eastern end of The Crescent; it is multi-aspect, with a three-storey, two-bay, main elevation facing onto the Market Place, a three-bay side elevation facing onto Park Street, and an attached four-bay, two-storey former service range. The ground floor of the main range has a painted ashlar bank frontage installed in 1900. It is entered on the left-hand side of the main elevation by a multi-panelled double door, set within a parapet hood doorcase with a recessed rectangular panel depicting stylised dolphins flanking a scallop shell, raised on tapering Ionic pilasters that have fluted consoles and recessed foliate panels. A narrower rectangular panel above the double doors also depicts stylised dolphins. The doorway is flanked to its right by two, two-light segmented windows with moulded imposts, keystones, panelled pilasters with capitals, and canted windowsills that drop below a moulded dado. Three identical windows occupy the side elevation, together with a canted bay that has similar windows. The first floor of the two-bay main elevation is lit by a three-over-two casement window to the left and a two-light sash window to the right, both with raised voussoirs and keystones, and resting on a sill band. The second floor has two similar, but smaller proportioned sash windows. The first and second floors of the three-bay asymmetrical side elevation also has similar sash windows; however, these have canted voussoirs and gadrooned keystones. The roof gutter is obscured by the ashlar coped parapet; it drains by a pipe into a moulded rectangular storm box that displays the date 1900 flanked by florets, and is emptied by a cast-iron downpipe.
The ground floor of the four-bay service range to the rear of the former bank chambers has been stuccoed and painted to match the appearance of the bank frontage. It has a multi-panelled side door situated immediately to the left of the canted bay, set within a painted flush ashlar doorcase with chamfered and stopped reveals, beneath a segmental fanlight. It has similar moulded detailing to the bank windows. The door is flanked to its left by an off-set security squint window with a drip mould formed by the termination of a moulded impost band. The remainder of the ground floor is lit by two eight-over-one horned sash windows either side of a narrow six-panelled door with a rectangular fanlight, all with matching gadrooned keystones and canted voussoirs. The first floor is lit by a mixture of sash windows and has a blocked window position over the narrow doorway, also with gadrooned keystones and canted voussoirs. The service range has a gabled Welsh-slate clad roof.
7 The Crescent has an asymmetrical three-storey main elevation. The ground floor has a four-panelled door with a semi-circular fanlight to the left and a double-fronted late-C19 to early-C20 shop front to the right. The door is set within a doorcase with panelled reveals and pilasters, console brackets and a dentilled pediment. The shop front has plain pilasters and a painted facia, moulded cornice, ashlar stall risers, moulded sills, large plate-glass windows and colonettes. There is a central recessed doorway with a half-glazed panelled door with a rectangular fanlight, and flanking windows. The three-bay first floor has a central six-light tripartite sash window flanked by two-light sashes, all resting on a continuous sill band. The asymmetrical second floor has two casement windows of small proportions and no window position in the right-hand bay. Numbers 8 and 9 have two identical two-bay main elevations with late-C20 shop fronts to the ground floor, with matching six-over-six sash windows to the first floor and three-over-six sashes to the second floor.
10 The Crescent has an asymmetrical three-storey, two-bay main elevation that brakes forward slightly from that of number 9. The ground floor has a late-C19 Arts and Crafts shop frontage with plain pilasters, console brackets, a canted facia and a moulded cornice. The accommodation above the shop is accessed by a recessed doorway to the extreme left, with plain pilasters, tongue and groove reveals and a two-panel Arts and Crafts leaded stained-glass clerestory. The glazed panelled door has a large central plate-glass panel, beneath two half-segmented upper panels, separated by a mullion. The recessed and canted shop entrance has a diamond-set black and white tiled floor leading to a shop door that is identical to the accommodation door. The door is flanked to both sides by narrow splayed side shop display windows with a large plate-glass shop window to the right. The windows have painted brick stall risers, moulded sills, decorative carved colonettes with bottle-shaped plinths and vase capitals, and Arts and Crafts leaded stained-glass clerestory panels. Both pairs of first- and second-floor six-over-six sash windows are off-set to the left, with those to the second floor being of smaller proportions.
11, 12, and 13 The Crescent each have a two-bay elevation with windows off-set to the left, like number 10. The ground floor of number 11 has a late-C19 double-fronted shop with plain pilasters, a modern rearward-canted facia and a central recessed doorway, approached by a patterned tile floor. The half-glazed door has a rectangular fanlight, and the splayed side and main shop windows to either side have painted plain stall risers, moulded sills, and elaborate colonettes with fluted plinths and Corinthian capitals supporting foliate spandrels. The splayed side and main windows have geometric cast-iron grilles. The first- and second-floor windows are both fitted with mid-C20 two-over-two sashes. 12 The Crescent has a mid-C20 bank front with plain pilasters, an off-set fielded three-panel door beneath a square fanlight to the left, a painted plain cement plinth, a panelled stall riser, four plate-glass windows, and a plain fascia. 13 The Crescent has been absorbed into number 14 and has two large 1960s plate-glass windows with a shallow riser and a deep plain fascia, which are a continuation of the modern shop window of number 14.
14 The Crescent has a three-storey, five-bay main elevation and a two-bay side (west) elevation that faces onto James Street. The main elevation breaks forward of number 13 and is aligned differently, facing directly onto the Market Place. The 1960s plate-glass ground-floor shop window has an off-set recessed entrance on the left-hand side, a canted corner window and a pair of windows to the side elevation with roller blinds, and terminates in plain grey mosaic tiled panels. The first- and second-floor windows of the main elevation are two-light sashes with similar proportions to those in other properties in The Crescent. The two-bay side elevation has blocked window positions in the left-hand bay, a modern four-light casement to the first floor and a six-over-six sash window to the second floor with a segmental brick head. Both windows are flanked to the right by small rectangular toilet windows. A modern glazed tile plaque in the form of a tracery lancet window, is attached to the first-floor left-hand bay.
