Former Gregory Butchers Shop

Former Gregory Butchers Shop

A mid-19th century beef and pork butcher shop at 103-105 Newgate Street, re-fronted and refurbished around 1909.

The building is constructed of coursed sandstone blocks with a 20th-century tiled roof, red brick chimney stacks, and a rear extension. The interior is partly tiled. The plan comprises a rectangular shop with a central rectangular rear range, an L-shaped extension to the right of the rear range forming a courtyard, and a shallow single-storey extension to the left of the rear range, all occupying a pair of linear plots.

The exterior is a two-storey, two-bay building with a pitched roof and end stacks, situated on the east side of Newgate Street. The main west elevation features a pair of small rectangular windows with plain stone lintels to the first floor, fitted with late-20th-century uPVC fixed frames. Below is a full-width shop front dating from about 1910. The symmetrical shopfront has a central deeply-splayed lobby with replacement tiled floors and an original decorative mirrored soffit. It features paired canted shop entrances. The right entrance retains its original Art Nouveau-influenced wooden door and fanlight with decorative spandrels, contemporary door furniture and business plate, while the left is modified with a replacement door and fanlight. The shop front is framed by wooden pilasters faced with plain boarding, beneath which the original mirrored and panelled surfaces are thought to remain. The pilasters are decorated with console brackets featuring carved foliate decoration and moulded square blocks with convex heads. The full-width fascia has applied modern boarding that is thought to mask the original fascia, which read "PORK GREGORY BEEF". Both shop windows rest on a stone base, with the left side faced in panelled boards. The right shop window retains its original form, comprising a large canted glass window with plain timber mullions topped by leaded transom lights with stained glass, each separated by original carved wooden mullions. One of these windows incorporates the word GREGORY in white. The left shop window, canted to the right, retains a similar form but is a replacement.

The rear east elevation has a projecting gabled range in red brick with a pitched roof and end stack. To the right is a flat-roofed L-shaped single-storey range of several phases, and to the left a shallow flat-roofed extension.

The interior of the former beef butchers retains original early-20th-century glazed tiles to its full-depth south wall. A frieze at ceiling height comprises green tiles with floral motifs, edged with lighter green tiles and darker moulded tiles. Plain buff tiles below reach to dado level, incorporating a series of large horizontal tiled panels alternating with smaller vertical panels, all with moulded edges and an inner egg-and-dart frame. The vertical panels feature a geometric design of plain white and green tiles decorated with yellow floral motifs. One horizontal panel depicts a pastoral mountain and lake scene with grazing horned cattle; the others have plain white tiled interiors with green and buff floral tiles to the corners and a central frame of green and yellow floral tiles containing a depiction of a cow. Below is a frieze of plain and floral green tiles. At the east end of the tiled wall is a full-height tiled pilaster. Meat hanging rails and gas mantles remain to the ceiling. The former pork butcher retains a modern shop interior with its north wall and ceiling obscured by 21st-century fittings and a suspended ceiling respectively, according to historical photographs.