40 Bridge Street and 40 Bridge Street Row West

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 19 September 2024 to amend the name, address and description, add references to selected sources and to reformat the text to current standards.

SJ4066SE
595-1/4/49

CHESTER CITY (IM)
BRIDGE STREET
No 40
and
BRIDGE STREET ROW WEST
No.40

(Formerly listed BRIDGE STREET AND ROW (West side), No.40 Street and No.40 Row,
previously listed as: BRIDGE STREET No.40))

10/01/89

GV
II
Numbers 40 Bridge Street and 40 Bridge Street Row West are a former Vinters shop, offices and two storey townhouse, substantially rebuilt in 1858 by James Harrison for Henry Welsby, a wine merchant. At the time of its construction, The Builder reported that ‘In excavating for new buildings opposite the Feathers Inn, several bases of Roman character have been discovered at a depth of 4 feet below the surface. They are in their original positions, forming a colonnade, placed four yards apart, resting on large blocks of stone 12 inches thick. The new building will be of brick, with white stone dressings, in the medieval style of the fourteenth century, presenting a gable to the street, and having a projecting bow-window to the room over the Row. A shop in Bridge Street Row is also to have timber work characteristic of Chester in the fourteenth century. Mr. Harrison is architect to both buildings.’

Harrison (1814-66) was a Chester-based architect and early adopter of the Vernacular Revival style which became nationally popular in the late C19. His work can also be seen in the building opposite (number 51 and 53 Bridge Street and 59 Bridge Street Row East) and he was responsible for restoring many of the city’s medieval churches. Welsby was a former excise officer turned vintner. His business, which included a shop and offices, occupied the premises until 1970. The Row level shop front dates to 1900-1910. In the C21 the Row and undercroft shops were split into separate businesses and have since had a series of retail occupants. The upper storeys were converted to residential in around 2015. The building is constructed of painted stone-dressed brick and brown brick with a tiled roof at right-angles to Bridge Street.

EXTERIOR: the building is of four storeys including an undercroft and Row level and is in a loose Gothic Revival style. The undercroft has a shopfront to the street which is rendered, with an altered door and window. There is a projecting porch at the north and a shaped timber bracket at the south which support a balcony that projects over the street, in front of the Row walk.

The Row has renewed wooden balusters and a rail to the opening between unpainted yellow sandstone end-piers. These have stopped ovolo chamfers and cusped brackets on foliar corbels and support a bressumer with a stopped reeded chamfer. There are altered steps and a concrete footbridge across Pierpoint Lane, dating to the, 1970s, and a sandstone riser and flag pavement to the balcony with a concrete Row walk. The painted stone rear wall has a shopfront in a shoulder-arched opening with a central, shortened mid-C19 part-glazed three-panel door with a single-pane overlight and a single-pane window of vertical proportion to each side; all of which are shouldered. South of the shopfront is a shoulder-arched passage entry which has a door with a central reed and four panels. The lower pair are raised panels and the upper pair have cusped heads beneath a plain overlight. The archway over the north end of the Row walk has moulded chamfers to a stone lintel on shaped brackets and there are narrow stop-chamfered joists to the plastered ceiling.

The upper storeys are of stone-dressed brick with flush quoins. The third storey has a stone-corbelled four-light canted oriel window with two over two-pane sashes in shoulder-arched lights and a hipped lead roof.

The fourth storey has a moulded band beneath the flush sill of a triple light window with two-pane sashes with arched heads. The stone-dressed front gable has a shaped kneeler, moulded coping and a foliar-headed octagonal finial.

The north face to Pierpoint Lane is of brown brick in irregular bond and is evidently older than the Bridge Street frontage and the visible internal features. The third storey has two dual sash windows of four over four-panes with painted stone sills and cambered brick heads.

The rear has a (probably inserted) full-width segmental brick arch, infilled in the C20, with a weatherboarded face and evidence of a two-storey gabled rear wing, now demolished. There is a dual sash window and a single sash, each small and of two panes, to the third storey, and a dual sash of four-over-four panes to the fourth storey. The shaped kneeler and coping to the rear gable were probably added in 1858.

INTERIOR: the undercroft is three steps down and is covered in modern linings. The Row storey has cornices, probably of 1858. The third and fourth storeys could not be inspected.
Listing NGR: SJ4052966159

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

470074

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Brown, A, The Rows of Chester: The Chester Rows Research Project, (1999), 164
The Builder in The Builder, Vol. XVI – No.793, (17 April 1858), 269
Hartwell, C, Hyde, M, Hubbard, E, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England. Cheshire, (2011)

Other
Cheshire Historic Environment Record, HER number 10564/2.
Cheshire Archives Reference: ZCR 95.

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