Number 42 Row Number 42 Street

Number 42 Street and Number 42 Row is an undercroft and town house, rebuilt around 1720 and extended to the rear and refaced towards Bridge Street around 1860. The building is constructed of sandstone and brick, painted, with a grey slate roof running at a right angle to the street.

The building is five storeys high. The 19th-century rear extension likely originated as a separate dwelling and now functions as an undercroft shop, a Row-level shop, a third-storey office, and a fourth-storey flat with an attic. The street frontage has a late 19th-century wooden shopfront with panelled end-pilasters, a recessed central door with a margin-paned window (featuring a quadrant pane and a flat pane on either side). The Row frontage incorporates a cast-iron rail on stick balusters, painted sandstone end-piers, a narrow boarded stallboard, and a boarded Row walk. The rendered rear wall of the Row contains a door of two flush panels, two field panels and two plain panels, with a two-pane overlight in an architrave. It also includes shutters on gudgeon hinges to a tripartite sash window with eight, twelve, and eight panes respectively, with boxed beams at each end and a plain bressumer. The upper storeys are of painted brickwork, featuring a brick band at each floor. Recessed sash windows are present with moulded stone sills and cambered gauged-brick heads; the third and fourth storeys have a tripartite sash of four, eight, and four panes, while the attic storey features a 16-pane sash. A coped gable is visible, along with two chimneys on the north wall, one towards the rear and built of two layers of brick.

The long three-storey rear wing is blank to the north and features a later one-storey lean-to roofed outshut, with two camber-arched windows with brick sills, containing nine panes each of a large size. Plain verges project from a band of three brick courses.

The undercroft and Row storey interiors display no visible features of special interest. A replaced one-flight staircase to the third storey retains a shaped top newel of late 17th-century character. The front room on this floor has panelled walls (one row below the dado and one above), a replaced fireplace, panelled window shutters which fold back against the wing walls, and a plaster cornice. The rear room on the third storey also has panelled walls and a cornice, alongside a replaced fireplace within a corner chimneybreast. The stair to the fourth storey, around a narrow stairwell, has square shaped newels of late 17th-century character, a closed string, two twisted-column-on-vase balusters per step and a softwood handrail. The fourth storey and attic were not accessible for inspection.