Number 39 Street

Number 39 Bridge Street incorporates a medieval undercroft, now a café, within a Neo-Jacobean brick building designed by Edward Hodkinson and erected in 1864 for the second Marquis of Westminster. The Row level and upper storeys are listed separately.

The undercroft, originally 4.2 metres high and 14.5 metres long, was built over the remains of a 2nd-century AD Roman bath house and likely served as a 14th-century “seld,” a one-product market structure larger than a single shop. A floor inserted in 1864 divided and reduced its height, but it retains features dating to around 1300 and was occupied by a café in 2022. The undercroft is constructed of squared sandstone rubble and painted brickwork.

The café is accessed from Bridge Street, and the cellar below contains the tall medieval undercroft. The west cellar wall incorporates masonry from the Roman bath house. The north and east cellar and café walls are built of squared rubble sandstone masonry dating from the 12th to the 13th centuries. An opening in the north wall, near the east end, leads down eight concrete steps to the undercroft, which was formerly at the rear of Number 37 Bridge Street. The undercroft’s floor and lower walls are of bedrock. A rock-cut sump, probably medieval, is fed with water and protected by a timber rail on column-on-vase balusters, likely dating to 1864. Remains of oak beams and joists survive.

A rebated medieval doorway on the east side leads to the remains of a Roman hypocaust, which was possibly restored during the building’s redevelopment in 1864. Twenty-seven square, waisted columns survive within a rectangular chamber that formerly contained four rows of eight columns. There is a large four-course stone corbel and a smaller corbel on each side in the east wall of the café.