Listed Building: NUMBER 19 ROW | NUMBER 25 STREET (1376223)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE EASTGATE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/157 (North side) No.25 Street and No.19 Row GV II Undercroft and town house, rebuilt as street shop, Row shop and town house, now street and Row level shop, office and flat. 1861. By TA Richardson. For Dutton and Miller, grocers. Timber framing with plaster panels to front, English garden wall bond brown brickwork to rear; grey slate roof. Proto Vernacular Revival. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys plus attics, including street and Row levels; almost symmetrical. Modern street level shopfront of no interest; 12 stone steps to Row and Godstall Lane, west; painted stone end-piers through street and Row storeys have tongue-stopped hollow chamfers; ornate wood and cast-iron Row-front railings; corbelled responds have foliar bases to moulded capitals carrying arched beam-brackets, the responds rising further to foliar caps of early C13 type directly beneath the Row-front bressumer. Boarded sloped stallboard 2.05m from front to back; granolithic finish to Row walk; the west end-pier is backed by an archway on fruit-and-foliage corbels; the east pier fronts a brick wall above the stallboard; C20 shopfront; plaster ceiling above stallboard and Row walk. The bressumer has a large central fruit-and-foliage pendant. The third storey has a central moulded corbel carrying a canted mullioned and transomed oriel of six 2-pane lights, the upper panes having trefoil heads; one bay of ornately braced small framing to each side of the oriel; carved cornice and hipped lead roof to oriel, with fourth storey floor bressumer showing to each side; a carved jetty-beam above the oriel roof carries the projecting central bay with 2 cross-windows in small-framing; each side-bay has a 1-light transomed window in over-braced framing. The central gable has a 1-light trefoil-headed window in framing with cusped braces; carved bargeboards and finial. The main roof, altered to rear, has half-gable ends; 2 steeply-pitched gabled dormers, one to each side of front gable. The rear has a timber-framed gazebo with pyramidal roof of banded purple and green slates at the north end of the flat roof at third storey floor level; the roof has a lead finial. INTERIOR: the shop, with surfaces covered at street and Row levels, has no visible features of special interest. The third and fourth storeys, recently restored, retain their mid C19 character to a degree unusual in the post-medieval Row properties. The dogleg stair has closed string, 2 turned balusters per step, stop-chamfered newel, swept handrail and moulded dado-rail. A pair of moulded timber Tudor arches between the third storey landing and the front room which has restored dado and fireplace, sill-bench in oriel, a column of Egyptian inspiration at each jamb of oriel and an ornate cornice; two 4-panel doors with arched upper panels. The stair to the fourth storey, offset west from the lower stair, is similarly detailed; cornice to landing. The fourth storey is largely replanned; a blocked Tudor archway; 12-pane sashes to rear. (Transactions of the Chester Archaeological Society: Old Series: Chester: 398 (18.11.1861)). Listing NGR: SJ4061166333