Number 1 Row Number 1 Street Number 2 Street

Number 1 Bridge Street, 1 Bridge Street Row East and 2 Eastgate Street

This corner building was constructed in 1888 as an undercroft with Row shops, possibly with accommodation on upper floors. It replaced a timber-framed structure that contained a 16th-century cistern and a flight of steps on the south-west corner of The Cross. The building is thought to have been commissioned by Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster, a landowner, property developer and former Member of Parliament for Chester, although the land was owned by Chester City Council by 1889. The designs were completed by Thomas Meakin Lockwood, Grosvenor's principal architect and a former pupil of Thomas Mainwaring Penson, who was influential in developing the Vernacular Revival style in Chester during the mid-19th century.

Lockwood established his practice in Chester in the early 1860s and became dominant in the city's architectural scene towards the end of the 19th century. He was a key exponent of the nationally popular Vernacular Revival style. His work appears in several projects in the Chester Rows, including the adjacent properties at number 4 Eastgate Street and 2 Eastgate Street South, and the building at the opposite corner comprising numbers 2-8 Bridge Street, 2-8 (part) Bridge Street Row West, 1-3 Watergate Street and 1 Watergate Row South Street. The latter was commissioned by Grosvenor four years later.

These prominent corner buildings were central to a building boom in Chester between 1888 and 1902, resulting from an upturn in the city's economy. At the start of the 20th century the undercroft shops were occupied by a watchmaker and a fine-art dealer, with the Row level unit operating as a hosier and glovemakers. Walton's Jewellers subsequently occupied the undercroft for 112 years before closing in 2021, extending into number 4 Eastgate Street. In 2023, the Row and undercroft shops remained in separate retail uses. The use of the upper floors, previously incorporated into the Row level shop, is unknown. The building is timber-framed with plaster panels and has a red-brown clay tile roof.

The exterior comprises four storeys including an undercroft, Row and attic. It has one bay to Bridge Street, a canted corner with an octagonal tourelle, and one bay to Eastgate Street.

The undercroft has a modern shopfront on each street elevation with seven stone steps rising to the Row at the corner beneath a round timber arch. Painted timber posts rise through the undercroft and Row storeys.

The Row level features shaped and pierced splat balusters between brick end piers to the Row front, a sloped boarded stallboard measuring 1.93 metres from front to back, and a terrazzo Row walkway with mosaic borders. An original shopfront at the corner of Eastgate and Bridge Street Rows has double doors, each leaf with a short fielded panel beneath a tall glazed panel with round upper corners and an overlight above. The shopfront has reeded vertically-boarded stall-risers, reeded posts and moulded frames enclosing a shop window of two panes to Bridge Street Row and one pane to Eastgate Row. There is a glazed showcase against each end-pier, a fascia and dentilled cornice above the shop door and windows, and the ceiling features lozenge and circular plaster panels in a reeded timber frame.

The third-storey bressumer has a patterned fascia and three rows of plaster panels. The lowest panels feature central decorative elements and arched braces, the middle row has round-arched heads and the upper row has ornate quadrant braces. A mullioned three-light casement window and a single-light window face Bridge Street. The corner turret has a taller four-light canted mullioned and transomed oriel window, and a continuous six-light mullioned casement window faces Eastgate Street. All third storey and attic windows have leaded glazing with shaped panes. A carved cornice with four gargoyles surmounts the corner oriel.

The attic roof is hipped to the corner. A dormer gable to Bridge Street projects on consoles carried by herms, with three mullioned lights above round-arched panels. The gable is jettied on shaped brackets with herringbone struts and moulded bargeboards. The corner turret has four strongly pargeted panels beneath a mullioned four-light canted window, above which sits a two-stage curved tourelle roof capped with a decorative wind vane.

Four consoles separated by round-arched pargeted panels carry the jettied blank gable to Eastgate Street. The gable displays raised and painted Grosvenor arms in its round-arched central panel, with shaped panels to each side and above, carved bargeboards and a drop finial. Shaped buff sandstone chimneys stand at each end of the ridge; the eastern chimney is shared with number 4 Eastgate Street and 2 Eastgate Row South.

The interior undercroft shop is three steps below Bridge Street and four steps below Eastgate Street. It contains a moulded cast-iron column and some late-19th-century beams, and has been extended into number 4 Eastgate Street.

An open-well closed-string oak stair rises from the Row storey to the third storey, with square newels with plinths and capitals and a moulded swept rail on two slender barley-sugar balusters per step. The steep softwood stair to the attic has turned newels with some turned and some reeded balusters. The roof structure is exposed.