Number 38 Street Numbers 36 And 38 Row

Shop at street level with shop at Row level and warehouse, now bank and in part of Row storey a shop. Built in 1897 by Douglas and Fordham. The building is constructed in pale yellow sandstone, stone-dressed brick and timber frame with plaster panels, beneath a grey-green slate roof with main ridge parallel to Bridge Street.

The exterior comprises 4 storeys including street and Row levels. Sandstone end piers flank the street and Row storeys, with the south pier canted at the corner of Pierpoint Lane. The street shopfront, altered in the 1980s for bank use, features a central recessed entrance with stone stallriser and windows with basket-arched upper panes.

The Row front displays 3 basket arches with carved balusters, moulded handrail and carved timber pilasters against the end piers and 2 carved posts. The stallboard and Row walk have screeded surfaces. An archway through a painted stone-dressed cross-wall runs to the north. The painted stone-dressed rear wall to Row contains a panelled door in a recessed porch with 4 steps, a pair of 2-light stone mullioned and transomed windows with leaded panes above the transoms, and a further similar separated window. Inside this space runs a moulded beam to the south, 2 hollow-stop-chamfered intermediate beams and a diagonal corner beam on moulded brackets, with a plastered ceiling.

The jettied close-studded third storey has a bressumer on an ornate corner-bracket with carved-head corbel and mock-gargoyles at the posts' caps. Two canted 6-light oriels in the front gable-end feature a concave timber-framed apron, 2 transoms, trefoil heads to upper lights and leaded glazing. The short north bay contains a 3-light trefoil-headed leaded casement with an altered middle light. The jettied gable holds a carved cambered tie-beam dated 1897, supported on 6 shaped brackets with herringbone struts and shaped and pierced bargeboards.

The south face to Pierpoint Lane is constructed of stone-dressed hard red brick in English garden wall bond. The first storey has mullioned small-pane barred windows comprising one of 4 lights, two of 3 lights and one of 2 lights. Two central doorways, both altered, each contain a boarded door and timber-framed side-panel of herringbone brickwork. A blocked doorway to the west has 4 tall herringbone panels with a 4-light fixed window above. The second storey contains stone mullioned and transomed casements: three of 3 lights, one of 2 lights and three of one light. The third storey's timber framing of the front returns to Pierpoint Lane, terminating in a wood-mullioned 5-light leaded casement with 2 transoms beneath a small gable with carved tie-beam, 3 posts, plaster panels, carved bargeboards and drop finial. Also on this storey are a wood-mullioned 3-light leaded casement, a corbelled chimney with 4 attached lozenge flues and three wood-mullioned 3-light leaded casements. A loading doorway blocked in timber-framed herringbone brickwork with a hoist-arm is surmounted by a gabled cockloft dormer.

The interior has no publicly visible features of special interest.

Historical records suggest this property may be referenced in a Chester City Council Improvement Committee Minute of 6 May 1897, which approved the erection of buildings in Bridge Street by John Douglas for the 1st Duke of Westminster.