12 New Street, Selby (formerly the Rose and Crown Public House)

Summary

Former public house/hotel, late C18 to early C19, converted into flats and apartments.

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.

New Street was laid out during the last decade of the C18 and the first decade of the C19 to connect Selby town centre to the new Selby Toll Bridge, and to the riverfront. The bridge was completed in 1792 and replaced an old foot ferry that had been an impediment to both vehicular traffic and trade. New Street provided a through-route for traffic travelling to and from the West Riding, Leeds, York and the East Riding. This increased traffic provided trading opportunities that resulted in the construction of several shops and public houses along the street. The three-storey Rose and Crown was the largest public house and had several rooms available for board and lodge. The earliest known publican was recorded in 1837 as Ellen Thornton. In 1860, it was recorded that carriers by horse and cart left from here for South Duffield, North Duffield and Barlby. The 1849 Ordnance Survey town map shows the building as having a L-plan that has remained basically the same to the present day (2023); however, a map of 1890 indicates that the left-hand bay of the ground floor of the main elevation was once occupied by a passageway which gave access to the rear of the property, where there was a brewery. It remained in continuous use as a public house until 2008, when it was finally closed and converted into one- and two-bedroom apartments.

Details

Former public house/hotel, late C18 to early C19, later converted into flats and apartments.

MATERIALS: stuccoed main elevations, fair-faced brick rear elevation, and a pantile pitched roof.

PLAN: L-plan.

EXTERIOR: the three-storey, five-bay main elevation facing on to New Street has four flush 12-light sash windows to each floor, with a blind window space to the right-hand bay of the first and second floors. The ground floor bays are irregular, and the off-centre plain timber front door has a rectangular fanlight with a plain pilastered timber surround, beneath a flat moulded cornice. The irregular three-bay south-west elevation has 12-light sashes to all three floors and an off-set doorway with a rectangular fanlight. Both elevations have oval cast-iron tie plates. The rear south-east facing elevation is blind, apart from a ground-floor door on the right-hand side, while the rear two-bay north-east facing elevation has a 12-light sash window and doorway to the ground-floor and a pair of similar sashes to the first-floor, and a pair of six-light sashes to the second-floor. The rendered north-east gable has mock quoining and a chimney stack at its apex. The south-east gable has a raised and coped verge with kneelers, and is mostly obscured by an attached modern building. The pitched roof has a central chimney stack, a small chimney stack rising against the coped verge, and has paired brackets to the eaves, supporting modern heritage guttering.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

325813

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Morrell, WW, The History and Antiquities of Selby, (1867)
Chilvers, R, Selby Shops Past and Present, (2015), 104
Anon, , Bellerby's Almanac, (1860)

Websites
Rose & Crown, 12 New Street, Selby Yorkshire, accessed 21 December 2022 from https://pubshistory.com/Yorkshire/Selby/RoseCrown.shtml

Other
1:1056 Town Map, 1849
1:500 Town Map, 1890-91

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