Listed Building: NUMBER 2 ROW | NUMBER 4 STREET (1376209)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE EASTGATE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/169 (South side) 23/05/67 No.4 Street and No.2 Row (Formerly Listed as: EASTGATE STREET No.4 Street and No.2 Row) GV II* Shop and accommodation on site of former undercroft and town house; now undercroft shop, Row shop, workshop and storage. Rebuilt 1888 by TM Lockwood for the first Duke of Westminster. Sandstone and timber framing with brown tile roof and terracotta ridge tiles. Vernacular Revival, but very opulent. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys of one bay, including undercroft and Row levels. Reworked street level shopfront, now entered from No.2 Street (qv), has 2 windows of 3 panes above panelled stallrisers. Red sandstone end-piers rise through undercroft and Row storeys. Turned timber Row front balusters and moulded rail; sloped boarded stallboard 1.65m from front to back between stone-banded brick cross-walls; boarded Row-walk; the shopfront is original, with recessed glazed door, showcase on east side and mullioned and transomed shop window, west, of 4 panes to front and one pane to entrance, on panelled stallrisers and with frieze and dentil cornice; reversed-taper carved pilasters; a short shop window at west end of front, now incorporated in No.2 Row; carved cross-beams on consoles; stop-chamfered joists to plaster ceiling over stallboard and Row-walk. The Classical caps to the end piers carry mask-corbels to the carved and stop-chamfered bressumer. 2 front consoles on each end pier and 3 secondary and 8 tertiary brackets from the bressumer to the carved jetty-beam; the third storey has a row of panels with 2 coats of arms beneath a continuous window comprising 2 transomed lights under round arches on richly-carved herms. Flanked by 5-light mullioned and transomed oriels on ornate brackets and with carved-panel frieze. The key of each central arch and a console at each end support the carved fourth storey jetty-beam dated 1888; richly-ornamented small-framing beneath and to each side of a 5-light mullioned and transomed casement. 4 consoles on herms carry the cove-jettied front gable which has 2 pargeted panels beneath a 3-light mullioned casement; all the upper storey windows have patterned leaded glazing. The gable has small-framing to sides of window and close-studding above it; bargeboards and shaped finial. The west end rises above No.2 Eastgate Row/No.1 Bridge Street Row (qv) by the same architect. The fourth storey and end-gable are expressed like the front, but with a shaped sandstone gable chimney, an effective vertical feature close to the street corner. INTERIOR: surfaces in the street-level shop are covered; the Row-level shop has an 1888 corner fireplace; a good ornate late C19 cast-iron spiral stair; some minor features in the third and fourth storeys; roof structure visible in attic. (Improvement Committee Minutes: Chester City Council: 1887-1888). Listing NGR: SJ4054066272