Summary
Terrace of shops with accommodation above, late-C18, altered in the C20 and C21.
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 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, who was 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 the Abbey Church of St Mary and St Germaine (Selby Abbey). 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. Numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5, together with number 1, form the north-eastern half of The Crescent. They all had service ranges with relatively small gardens or yards with combined closets and coal stores to the rear; most of these have since been infilled to a greater or lesser degree by extensions and car parking spaces. In 1847, number 2 was occupied as the Yorkshire District Branch Bank; by 1889 it had been extended and became the Selby and District Conservative Club, and in the second decade of the C21 it became a snooker club. Numbers 3, 4 and 5 have continued to be commercial properties with accommodation over.
Details
Terrace of shops with accommodation above, late-C18, altered in the C20 and C21.
MATERIALS: fair-faced brick, slate-clad gable roof, with brick and rendered rear ranges.
PLAN: sub-rectangular plans.
EXTERIOR: each of these four properties within the terrace has a three-storey, three-bay main (north-west) elevation with the roof and gutter obscured by a parapet. The elevation of number 2 is asymmetrical, and those of numbers 3, 4, and 5 are set back slightly from number 2. The ground floor of number 2 is occupied by a mid-C20 Art Deco former Conservative Club frontage with plain painted cement render pilasters, plinth and cornice. It is entered by a three-panel timber door to the left and lit by three multi-pane, painted galvanised steel Crittal windows with leaded lights, resting on a plain sill band with recessed brick panels below and a flat facia panel above. Number 3 has a late-C19 to early-C20 shopfront in antis with a wide and deeply splayed entry, leading to a glazed double shop door, beneath a two-light rectangular fanlight. The entry has a mosaic floor and is edged in trailing foliage motifs that respects the concrete base of a former island display case. Three canted shop windows exist to each side with quality Art Nouveau details to the glazing bars, fluted pilasters and consoles, a recessed roller awning, decorated soffit, and a domed facia with a dentil cornice. The shopfronts of numbers 4 and 5 date to the mid- to late C20. The first floor of each property (except for number 3 which has two-light horned sashes) have three 12-light six-over-six sashes with raised voussoirs, resting on a continuous painted and rendered sill band. All of the second floors are lit by three similar windows with smaller proportions.
The rear elevation of number 2 is rendered and painted, while the remaining elevations are fair-faced brick, which are set back with dentil eaves courses, and are fenestrated by a wide variety of types and shapes of windows. A rectangular-plan, tall single-storey billiard hall is attached to the rear of number 2; it has a Diocletian window in the south gable, a Welsh slate clad roof with obscured skylights, and three galvanized steel ridge ventilators. Numbers 3 and 5 have two-storey service ranges with gabled roofs clad in Welsh slate, and number 4 has a late-C20 flat roofed single-storey rear range. The main roofs are clad in Welsh slate; number 2 has a coped raised verge with a kneeler; number 2 has a dormer window to the front; number 3 has a pair of plain dormer windows to the front and a single dormer to the rear; and there is a small attic window in the apex of the south-west gable of number 5.
