Number 28 Street Number 34 Row Crypt Building

Number 28 Eastgate Street and Number 34 Row (Crypt Building) is a Grade I listed building in Chester, comprising in part the undercroft of a former town house dating from around 1300, with the frontage, Row storey and upper floors rebuilt as a department store in 1858 by architect T.M. Penson for William and Charles Brown of the prominent Chester family of drapers.

The building is constructed of red and yellow sandstone with banded brown tile roofs. It rises four storeys above the undercroft and Row level, plus attics, executed in High Gothic style. The most prominent feature is a square stair turret with three arcaded bays to the east and one wider bay to the west.

At undercroft level, the bays are divided by stop-chamfered piers. The shop windows feature stop-chamfered posts and lintels with rounded upper corners to the panes. The ground level access comprises, from left to right, a window, a flight of eight sandstone steps up to the Row, another window, and a side-buttressed entry under a carved archway within the tower leading to the undercroft. Two additional windows serve the medieval undercroft.

The Row front displays ornate Gothic cast-iron rails positioned between trefoil pier-responds and quatrefoil columns carrying moulded and carved arches. The stallboards are boarded and slope 1.81 metres from front to back, with a terrazzo walk. Shop windows have marble stallrisers, colonnette mullions and panes with shaped upper corners. A moulded arched showcase stands beside the tower, and an arched oak-framed and boarded door on wrought-iron hinges provides access to the spiral stair within the tower. Three moulded arches span the Row. The Row ceiling is panelled in octagonal and lozenge compartments beneath a cornice decorated with Tudor roses. A blank scroll appears on the front of the tower, with recessed panels inscribed W.B. (William Brown) on the east face and C.B. (Charles Brown) on the west face. A scroll on the rear is inscribed "AD 1858: CRYPT CHAMBERS". Chester City arms and scrolls flank the shop entrance.

The third and fourth storeys each contain three pairs of two-light windows with colonnettes between. East of the tower stands a semicircular two-storey oriel; west of the tower are four two-light windows matching those in the east wing. Carved heads serve as corbels supporting trefoils beneath an ornate cornice. The central bay of the east wing is topped by a gable with a traceried window set within a circular triangle. The tower features a rectangular four-light traceried window between shallow buttresses. The front gable of the west wing contains a small triangular oriel. The tower terminates in a truncated spire with a gabled dormer on each face, each containing a two-light traceried window, and an ornate cast-iron rail encloses the look-out platform.

Internally, five steps descend to the undercroft lobby, which has a sandstone flag floor. Glazed framed and boarded doors, one with leaded glazing, provide access west to the medieval undercroft. Two further steps descend to a landing, followed by six steps to the undercroft floor. The undercroft frontage, heavily restored but unaltered in 1858, features an arched central doorway flanked by lancet windows, indicating that medieval access involved steps descending directly from the street. The openings have concave chamfers, dating to around 1300. The undercroft comprises four rib-vaulted bays with chamfered ribs and high-quality vault masonry. A rear passage, probably contemporary with the undercroft, runs to its east. The undercroft extends further back, though with no visible evidence of pre-20th century work. A 19th-century opening marks the east wall, and a possibly medieval opening leads to the rear. Two barrel-vaulted bays of 18th or 19th-century date lie east of the medieval undercroft. At Row level, surfaces are largely covered, but two ceiling panels preserve circle-in-square mouldings with flower-and-foliage motifs. An open-well stair incorporates two blank arches of 1858 in its north wall.

The medieval undercroft is an excellent example of its type. The 1858 frontage and upper storeys are of particular significance as an early manifestation of department store development in Chester.