Listed Building: NUMBER 26 STREET | NUMBER 32 ROW (1376230)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4066SE EASTGATE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/180 (South side) 28/07/55 No.26 Street and No.32 Row (Formerly Listed as: EASTGATE STREET No.26 Street & No.32 Row) GV II* Undercroft and town house, now undercroft shop, Row shop and ancillary storage and office. C17, early C18 and 1858 by TM Penson for Butt in proto Vernacular Revival style. Sandstone and timber frame with plaster panels; old brown brick to west side; grey slate roof, ridge at right angle to front. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys of one bay. Modern shopfront to street of no interest between sandstone stop-chamfered end-piers to undercroft, half-round responds and foliar capitals to Row storey. Cast-iron Gothic Row-front railings; covered sloping stallboard 2.2m from front to back; terrazzo Row walk; shopfront with no features of special interest; panelled ceiling to stallboard and Row; Row-top bressumer with moulded chamfers. The third storey has a row of 10 small-framed panels, a leaded 5-light mullioned and transomed casements with 2 close-stud round-topped panels to each side. Quadrant brackets on 4 angel corbels, with 10 small panels between, support the fourth storey jetty-beam which has moulded arris; a central canted 3-light oriel on a massive moulded corbel in an arch-braced truss, with an S-shaped strut to each side of oriel and chamfered corner posts; richly carved and crocketed bargeboards; carved finial with pendant. The brick west wall has a replaced 3-light mullioned window and a tall lateral chimney. INTERIOR: the undercroft, 3 steps down, has surfaces covered. The early C20 Row shop retains the form of a previous galleried hall. The open-string open-well early C18 stair to the rear has plinthed newels, 3 vase balusters per step, shaped brackets and a heavy swept rail, all painted. The good parlour above the Row has oak wainscot to all walls with 2 rows of panels beneath the dado rail and above it 3 rows of vertical proportion with a row of broad panels beneath the oak cornice; the carved oak fireplace has architraves flanked by foliar motifs and a frieze with a fine pictorial panel of old Chester and the Dee in relief, between swags; oak door of 2 short, 2 long and 2 short fielded panels; boxed beams; original joists. The timber-framed front to this item is one of the earliest of the forerunners of the Vernacular Revival in Chester; the C17 over-Row parlour is the best, other than in Watergate Street, Chester. (Improvement Committee Minutes: Chester City Council: 23/6/1858: 1858-; Chester Rows Research Project: Harris R: Eastgate Street South: 1989-1990). Listing NGR: SJ4060766280