Listed Building: NUMBER 28 ROW | NUMBER 30 STREET (1376076)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE BRIDGE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/44 (West side) 10/01/89 No.30 Street and No.28 Row (Formerly Listed as: BRIDGE STREET No.30 Liberty) GV II Undercroft and town house, then public house, now shop. Unexecuted plans and perspective for rebuilding dated 1873 by John Douglas; more modest proposals possibly by Douglas and Minshull approved by Chester City Council Improvement Committee 4 January 1899, modified and re-approved 27 September 1899 and built 1900; before 1899 the public house was the Harp and Crown, thereafter the Grotto; wholly recast internally, except for the cellars, as a shop 1980s. Painted sandstone and brick and timber framing with plaster panels; grey slate roof hipped to south and to rear. EXTERIOR: cellars and 3 storeys including street and Row levels. The front to Bridge Street, having a carved bressumer above the Row opening and supporting capitals slightly out of true, may in part be a reconstruction rather than a new building; it is unique for its period in central Chester in being no taller than the building replaced. The street-level shopfront has stone piers, a 1980s doorway in an older recessed porch, south, with double part-glazed doors, sidelights and leaded overlight; a 2-pane shop-window with leaded glazing above the transom; a similar window of one pane in the canted corner with Commonhall Street; 10 stone steps and one wooden step to Row, south. The Row front has turned wooden balusters and moulded rail, stone piers with capitals carrying third storey bressumer and stone newel at head of steps, all with roll-moulded arrises. The stallboard, 2m from front to back, formerly had an enclosed northern bay, used as a barber's shop. The Row walk is boarded. The shopfront to rear of the Row walk is of black-painted brickwork with double doors, 2 shop-windows north of the doorway and one south, all similar to those at street level; an S-shaped flight of steps, replaced in concrete, to Commonhall Street and a 1970s concrete footbridge to the Row of No.26 (qv), north. The ceiling above the Row and stallboard is plastered; a tall shaped bracket supports the jettied third storey at the corner. The north bay of the small-framed third storey has a jettied front gable similar to that of the previous building; the panels beneath the windows, and the sides of the windows in the front gable-end are shaped; two 3-light casements in the gable-front and one in the south bay; slightly curved herringbone gable struts, bargeboards and finial; a ridge chimney. The face to Commonhall Street behind the Row steps is of painted brick up to Row storey sills and small-framed above with S-curved braces; the informal window-pattern includes a curved oriel. INTERIOR: the cellar probably dates in its present form from 1900. There are no visible features from before the 1970s in the upper storeys. (Improvement Committee Minutes: Chester City Council: 4/1 & 27/9/1899; Chester Rows Research Project: Harris R: Archive, Bridge Street West: 1989-). Listing NGR: SJ4052366195