Listed Building: NUMBER 12 ROW | NUMBER 12 STREET (1376213)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE EASTGATE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/173 (South side) No.12 Street and No.12 Row GV II Undercroft shop, Row shop and ancillary accommodation. On site of a former town house which had a C13-14 two-bay vaulted undercroft, destroyed 1861 when rebuilt by G Williams of Liverpool for Messrs Beckett and Co., drapers. Timber-framed front with plaster panels; some sandstone; brick to rear; banded tile roof with front gable abutting ridge parallel with street. EXTERIOR: undercroft, tall Row, third and fourth storeys and attic. Central flight of 10 sandstone steps to the Row with, to each side, a sandstone crosswall and a modern shopfront, with 9 steps down to undercroft. Painted stone end-piers matching those to No.10 Street (qv). Ornate quatrefoil-in circle cast-iron railing to Row front and sides; ornamented timber post above each side of steps; stepped and slightly sloped stallboard 1.82m from front to back; faded gilt sign on inner face of east end-pier SILKS, DRESS FABRICS, LINEN, HOSIERY, GLOVES, FURS, GARNITURES, ARTICLES DE PARIS; terrazzo Row walk, damaged, with mosaic border; modern shopfront of no interest; patterned quadrant brackets to Row-top bressumer. The third storey has a row of panels, largely hidden by nameboard, between bressumer and a continuous window of 3;2;3 two-pane lights punctuated by a colonnette above each Row post and paired colonnettes at ends; the window has a St Andrew's cross, with a trefoil in each triangle, above each light; the surfaces of the colonnettes are latticed, with capitals of C14 form. Brackets over the colonnettes carry the fourth storey jetty-beam with ornate stopped chamfers; a row of 16 quatrefoil panels; four 2-pane sashes flanked by panels with criss-cross bracing, between 2 small corner-balconies with square posts and handrails on turned balusters. The ornate jettied front gable has hollow-lozenge, St Andrew's cross and rectangular small-framing, possibly false, marked and painted in the plaster; 3 spirally-moulded colonnettes under a mullioned window of four 2-pane sashes on a jettied sill-beam; ornate head-beam, cusped bargeboards, end finials and central drop-finial. INTERIOR: the undercroft surfaces are covered in textured plaster, but suggest that the sandstone sidewalls of the medieval undercroft may in part survive. The Row shop has a central row of cast-iron debased Doric columns carrying a longitudinal cast-iron II beam. There is noted to be an ornate cast-iron spiral stair, now concealed. The third storey contains a row of 5 cast-iron columns, approximately Corinthian. The upper storeys retain door architraves and small-pane rear sash windows. The part of the east side of No.10 Street visible from the fourth floor balcony of No.12 indicates that No.12 postdates No.10. HISTORICAL NOTE: G Williams, the architect of this item is probably the George Williams who designed No.33 Eastgate Street (qv), now National Westminster Bank, in Classical style 1859-60. (Journal of Chester Archaeological Society: Old Series: Chester: 1858-1864: 410). Listing NGR: SJ4056866274