80 Newgate Street

80 Newgate Street is a Grade II listed co-operative store dating from 1873, with extensions and alterations added throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The building comprises a long rectangular range of four separate blocks fronting the street, with varied rear extensions and basements. The original 1873 building is constructed of snecked stone with ashlar dressings, while the later phases use dressed stone; the sides and rear are of brick. The four main phases are dated, from left to right, as 1892, 1892–1894, 1873 (original), and 1882–1883.

The exterior consists of three storeys arranged across all four blocks beneath a unified, later-replaced ground-floor shop front. The original 1873 building features four recessed round-headed window openings to the first floor, paired at the centre and set beneath a shallow segmental arch with narrower flanking windows under similar arches. An impost moulding is carried on colonnettes with carved capitals. A continuous hood moulding runs above the segmental arches, terminating in carved label stops at either end; roundels are set in the spandrels of the flanking windows and a carved triangular panel occupies the spandrel between the two central windows. The second floor contains one-over-one sash windows recessed within square-headed openings set on a continuous projecting moulded sill course carried on paired moulded consoles. The outer windows have quadrant-cornered lintels with central carved panels; the two central windows have segmental heads with central projecting keystones. The slate roof is concealed behind a parapet containing a central embossed date stone reading '1873', flanked by six chamfered circular perforations, and set on a moulded cornice returning at both ends and carried on evenly spaced plain moulded consoles.

The 1882–1883 extension to the right comprises six bays with a pointed gable over the two left bays. The gable contains paired shoulder-arched window openings with one-over-one recessed sash windows set below pointed-arch hood mouldings terminating in carved label stops with carved enrichments to the tympana. At second floor, three recessed segmental-headed one-over-one sash windows are grouped on a continuous projecting moulded sill course carried on four equally spaced plain moulded corbels separated by colonnettes and set in a rectangular opening broken by a central upward-projecting pointed arch containing carved enrichment. Above this sits a stepped pediment containing square diamond relief panels and other carved embellishments. The slate roof is hidden behind a parapet identical to the 1873 building, with a central embossed date stone reading '1882' flanked by six chamfered circular perforations.

The 1892–1894 section attached to the left of the original building comprises six bays and is almost an exact mirror image of the 1882 building, with the principal difference being in the wider pedimented three-bay section, where the latticework decoration of the tympanum has been removed, leaving the pediment truncated.

The left end block of 1894 has three bays with moulded sill bands, eaves cornice, a parapet balustrade, and ball finials on the parapets and gables. The quoined central bay slightly projects under a pointed, truncated gable bearing in relief an inset cartouche with the initial 'CM' and the date '1894'. The first and second floor windows are two-light and three-light stone-mullioned with Gibbs surrounds. The sill band of the first floor continues to the flanking bays, which have renewed first-floor windows with inserted flat stone lintels. Second floor windows have architraves, friezes, and entablatures matching those of the central windows.

The interiors of the front ranges have undergone several modifications including the removal of original partition walls and the blocking and modification of original openings. A single surviving cast-iron column with quatrefoil brackets remains in the original building's basement, and the ground floor retains inserted late-19th-century columns encased in display panelling. Historic fixtures include the remains of a panelled plaster soffit to a formerly larger opening carried on a wide fluted plaster console with egg and dart enrichment; late-19th-century flooring beneath later floor coverings; original ceilings with moulded cornices above inserted ceilings; and some late-19th-century plaster work to one wall. The first extension contains a timber post carrying a central beam in the basement. The second extension retains an original but modernised bifurcated late-19th-century public staircase rising through all floors, whose balustrading has been replaced in glass and stainless steel. The original first floor boardroom survives, entered through a late-19th-century half-glazed double door set into a glazed screen, and features exposed softwood floorboards, moulded skirtings, dado and cornices, and traces of an early-20th-century decorative scheme. The former managing secretary's office contains a four-panel door and a timber and tile fireplace surround. The late-19th-century roof structures are understood to remain in situ. The rear ranges are considered to retain significant original plaster work and other features beneath later boarding, and retain evidence of hoists, grilles, lifts, and transportation linked to cart entrances and surviving gateways paved with timber cobbles. The building is anticipated to contain further evidence of internal ornament and fitments currently obscured by 20th-century stud walling and suspended ceilings.