Listed Building: 51, LOWER BRIDGE STREET (1376309)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4065NE LOWER BRIDGE STREET 595-1/6/258 (East side) 28/07/55 No.51 GV II Town house, now hotel and restaurant with No.49 (qv). 1700. For John Mather, lawyer. Flemish bond brown brick with grey slate roof, ridge at right-angle to front. EXTERIOR: semi-basement, 3 storeys and roof attic; 3 windows. Rendered stone plinth to former Row level, rusticated quoins above. 4 steps down from south to basement; stone stair from north to main entrance; quarter landing provides porch to basement doorway. 9 steps and quarter landing with simple wrought-iron railing to front door of 6 fielded panels with a 3-pane overlight in a substantial painted stone case with eared bolection architrave on square plinths and broken scroll pediment on consoles. Recessed sashes of 16 and 12 panes north of entrance and a 16-pane sash to south. Stone floor-bands to second and third storeys; 3 sashes of 16, 12 and 16 panes to second storey and 12, 9 and 12 panes, with short upper leafs, to third storey; all have stooled sills of painted stone and keyed wedge lintels. Decorated frieze and modillion cornice with boxed timber gutter, down-pipe on south return. A gabled central roof dormer. Lateral chimneys. The south side has a projecting wing, set back with a projecting chimney at its west corner, a flush chimney at its east corner, a broad window to the second storey and a flush 12-pane sash to the third storey. The rear, symmetrically disposed, has a C20 extension to the first storey, masking the lower part of a small rear closet wing at each corner having a narrow 2 x 6-pane sash to the second storey and one of 2 x 4 panes to the third storey; continuous brick floor-bands across the rear and around each closet-wing. A replaced attic window in the full-width rear gable; flush eaves. INTERIOR: could not be inspected fully, but was recorded in 1988. The undercroft is 0.6m below street level and 2.45m high, 15.5m from front to back and 9.6m wide; the rear part has a brick barrel-vault. The first storey is altered. The north front room has dado rail, fire surround and cornice; the altered rear room has parts of dado-rail and dentil cornice; these features are probably late C18. The rebuilt stair retains barleysugar balusters and handrail, early C18. The second storey has late C18 architraves and cornices. No features of special interest are visible in the third storey. The attic displays purlins and construction of roof hips. (Chester Rows Research Project: Grenville J: Lower Bridge Street, East: 1988-). Listing NGR: SJ4062865966