Listed Building: NUMBER 48 AND 50 STREET | NUMBERS 48, 50 AND 52 ROW THREE OLD ARCHES (1376095)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE BRIDGE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/53 (West side) 10/01/72 Nos.48 & 50 Street and Nos.48, 50 & 52 Row (Three Old Arches) (Formerly Listed as: BRIDGE STREET Nos 48 & 50 Street & Nos 50 & 52 Row) GV I An undercroft and town house, with No.52 Street (qv), now with Nos 44 & 46 Street and Row (qv) a department store. c1200, early to mid C14, late C18, C19 and C20. Sandstone and brick, painted; grey slate roofs hipped to fronts, ridges at right-angle to the street. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys including undercroft and Row levels. Features of special interest are the 3 stone arches, probably the earliest identified shopfront in England, at front of No.48 and the great hall across both street numbers, the largest in the Row buildings of Chester; No.52 Street is on the site of the former medieval service wing. No.48: Three Old Arches: the shopfront to the street is C19 and C20 with central entrance, display window of one pane north and a 4-pane flush sash, south; openings have mid-to-late C19 cases with a cornice above on 6 brackets. The piers of the 3 arches pass through undercroft, altered, and Row storey. The Row front has 4 piers, chamfered front and back, and 3 round arches chamfered to front; the spandrels, flush to front and with voussoirs chamfered to front only, are less than half the pier-thickness and supported the base-plate of the former timber-framed upper structure. Plain cast-iron stick balusters and rail to Row front in each archway; consistent with the early dating, there is no stallboard; granolithic Row walk; the rendered wall to rear of Row has a flush sash of 8;12;8 panes with shutters on gudgeon hinges, a flush 12-pane sash and a door of 6 margined panels; a massive beam across the Row, north, and an exposed oak beam, south; plastered ceiling; at the north end of the Row modern double doors lead to No.50. The third and fourth storeys are brick, with flush quoins at corner; 3 flush sashes to the third storey have painted stone sills and gauged brick heads with flush keystones; the fourth storey has a tripartite sash of 4;12;4 panes, removed for repair when inspected; plain coped parapet. No.50 has rendered plinth, wood pilasters, central entrance, a 1-pane window to each side and a cornice on shaped brackets. The upper storeys are brick. The Row is enclosed; 2 nearly-flush 16-pane sashes with painted stone sills and cambered brick heads; the third storey has 2 similar sashes; the fourth storey has a tripartite 4;12;4 pane sash removed for repair when inspected; plain stone coping. The rear of Nos 48 & 50 have C20 extensions. INTERIOR: the undercroft of No.48 has cast-iron columns in place of two 2-centred double-chamfered arches on an octagonal central pier, removed c1900; No.50 retains the slightly-pointed early-to-mid C14 arch on shallow-moulded half-octagon piers; the pier-bases are below present floor level, with a C18-C19 rock-cut cellar beneath. The Row storey contains substantial elements of the C14 stone hall, parallel with the street; the east and north walls, with much masonry intact, establish dimensions of 12.4m north to south by 8.88m east to west. The east wall has the 2-centred archway of the front opening to the former screens passage, south, with roll and hollow mouldings on the outer side and a square order rebated under a segmental relieving arch on the hall side, with vertical grooves, east, for the former buttery partition and west for the screen; the adjacent archway, probably formerly to a stair, is narrow, 2-centred, chamfered to the hall but plain to the outer side, under a chamfered relieving arch; immediately north a chamfered segmental-arched opening, formerly to the shop; by the north corner a fourth archway, probably formerly to a private room associated with the shop; the archway chamfers have pyramidal stops. A C16 open fireplace with moulded bressumer is central on the north wall, its position suggesting a possibly earlier origin, now contains a C19 cast-iron range; a cambered oak inglenook-bressumer on the south wall; now plastered, the south and west walls are probably post-medieval. No individual features of special interest are visible in the third or fourth storeys. (Chester Rows Research Project: Harris R: Archive, Bridge Street West: 1989-). Listing NGR: SJ4053566121