Summary
Former public house, now restaurant and main entranceway to the Abbey Walk Shopping Centre, early to mid-C19, with C20 and C21 alterations.
History
Selby as a settlement dates to the Anglo-Saxon period, when it was known as Seletun (old Scandinavian for ‘sallow tree settlement’) and was referred 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.
By the C18, Gowthorpe had become the principal shopping street of Selby, leading onto the marketplace and Selby Abbey. It was also the main thoroughfare to Leeds. Medieval burgage plots used to extend on the northern side as far as Selby Dam. The Grey Horse Hotel (public house) was built on the site of an earlier building and its narrow rear range conforms to part of one of these burgage plots. The 1849 Ordnance Survey town map shows the existing building and the covered passageway leading through to the rear, where there was a pig market. The 1890 town map shows it as The Grey Horse Hotel and indicates that, by this date, the pig market had been moved nearer to Selby Dam, with additional buildings being built to the rear of the public house. Around the turn of the C20, the ground floor of the public house was given a decorative stone pub front with horizontal channels and a Tudor-style mullioned window, flanked to its right by a doorway and a decorative carriage arch. During the mid-C20 it was operated as a tied house by Bentley’s Yorkshire Breweries Ltd and, in 1968, the ownership passed to Whitbread Breweries, who operated it until it closed in 1997. Upon closure, it was converted into a shop during 1998, and the Abbey Walk Shopping Centre was built to the rear of Gowthorpe and Finkle Street, at which point, the decorative carriage arch of The Grey Horse Hotel became the main thoroughfare from Gowthorpe to the new complex. A green glass canopy was installed over the arch, with a frosted glass panel that reads: ABBEY WALK. 18 Gowthorpe was formerly listed with an incorrect address as The Grey House.
Details
Former public house, now restaurant and main entranceway to the Abbey Walk Shopping Centre, early to mid-C19, with C20 and C21 alterations.
MATERIALS: stuccoed and fair-faced brick, sandstone door surrounds and pitched pantile roofs.
PLAN: trapezoidal two-bay plan with a carriage passageway.
EXTERIOR: the ground-floor of the main (south) elevation has a modern double-fronted late-C19 style shop front with panelled stalls risers, transom lights, and windows flanking the recessed and splayed entrance, closed by a half-glazed panelled door. Panels of horizontally channelled stone walling exist to either side of the window. A moulded timber fascia above the transom windows is attached below the level of the original painted stone fascia, which continues above a carriage arch with a moulded four-centred head and keystone, raised on a plinth, with a plain architrave on both sides. The stuccoed first floor has rusticated corners and the fascia has a raised and moulded cornice that forms a sill band beneath two windows; one with a late-C19 four-light sash and the other with a modern four-light casement, both within moulded architraves below a moulded stuccoed eaves cornice. The building does not share the same alignment as the adjacent 20 Gowthorpe; consequently, the rendered west gable wall is partially exposed to the rear and it has ashlar coping and an apex chimney stack. The roof is drained by a mixture of plastic and cast-iron rainwater goods.
The east side elevation, flanking the former carriage passageway, has a modern double-fronted shop window, set between channelled stone walling and a central stone doorcase raised on a plinth, which has a moulded four-centred head and a keystone. The rear brick elevation of the over-sailing room above the passageway is built using English garden wall bond with a relieving arch and a blocked window. The fair-faced two-storey, two-bay east elevation of the rear range was built using small bricks laid in a mixed garden wall bond, it has two modern four-light sashes to the ground floor on concrete sills and a single central sash to the first floor. The north gable is canted and steeply pitched, and is partially exposed above the roof of an adjacent property. It has ashlar stone coping, a rendered ridge stack towards the centre of the roof, and it is drained by timber rainwater gutters.
