Number 19 Row Number 25 Street

Number 19 Row, Number 25 Street, Chester

Undercroft and town house, rebuilt in 1861 as a street shop, Row shop and town house. Now comprising street and Row level shop, office and flat. Designed by TA Richardson for Dutton and Miller, grocers. The building exemplifies the Proto Vernacular Revival style.

The exterior is constructed of timber framing with plaster panels to the front, and English garden wall bond brown brickwork to the rear, with a grey slate roof. The building rises four storeys plus attics, incorporating both street and Row levels in an almost symmetrical composition.

The street level shopfront is a modern insertion of no architectural interest. Twelve stone steps lead to the Row and Godstall Lane at the west. Painted stone end-piers extend through the street and Row storeys, featuring tongue-stopped hollow chamfers. The Row-front is embellished with ornate wood and cast-iron railings. Corbelled responds with foliar bases support moulded capitals carrying arched beam-brackets, rising further to foliar caps of early 13th-century type directly beneath the Row-front bressumer. The boarded sloped stallboard extends 2.05 metres from front to back, with a granolithic finish to the Row walk. The west end-pier is backed by an archway on fruit-and-foliage corbels, whilst the east pier fronts a brick wall above the stallboard with a 20th-century shopfront. A plaster ceiling spans above the stallboard and Row walk. The bressumer features a large central fruit-and-foliage pendant.

The third storey displays a central moulded corbel carrying a canted mullioned and transomed oriel of six 2-pane lights, with the upper panes having trefoil heads. One bay of ornately braced small framing flanks each side of the oriel. A carved cornice and hipped lead roof crown the oriel, with the fourth storey floor bressumer showing to each side. A carved jetty-beam above the oriel roof carries the projecting central bay, which contains two cross-windows in small framing. Each side-bay has a 1-light transomed window in over-braced framing.

The central gable features a 1-light trefoil-headed window in framing with cusped braces, carved bargeboards and finial. The main roof, altered to the rear, has half-gable ends and two steeply pitched gabled dormers, one to each side of the front gable.

The rear elevation includes a timber-framed gazebo with pyramidal roof of banded purple and green slates at the north end of the flat roof at third storey floor level, crowned with a lead finial.

Internally, the shop spaces at street and Row levels have covered surfaces with no visible features of special interest. The third and fourth storeys, recently restored, retain their mid-19th-century character to a degree unusual in post-medieval Row properties. The dogleg stair features a closed string, two turned balusters per step, stop-chamfered newel, swept handrail and moulded dado-rail. A pair of moulded timber Tudor arches separate the third storey landing from the front room, which retains restored dado and fireplace, a sill-bench in the oriel, a column of Egyptian inspiration at each jamb of the oriel, and an ornate cornice. Two 4-panel doors with arched upper panels complete the room. The stair to the fourth storey, offset west from the lower stair, is similarly detailed with a cornice to the landing. The fourth storey is largely replanned, retaining a blocked Tudor archway and 12-pane sashes to the rear.