Number 40 Row Number 40 Street

Numbers 40 Bridge Street and 40 Bridge Street Row West, Chester

A former vintner's shop, offices and two-storey townhouse, substantially rebuilt in 1858 by architect James Harrison for Henry Welsby, a wine merchant. At the time of construction, The Builder reported the discovery of Roman bases during excavation for the new building opposite the Feathers Inn, found four feet below the surface in their original positions, forming a colonnade placed four yards apart and resting on large stone blocks twelve inches thick. The new building was to be of brick with white stone dressings in the medieval style of the fourteenth century, presenting a gable to the street and having a projecting bow-window to the room over the Row. A shop in Bridge Street Row was also to have timber work characteristic of Chester in the fourteenth century.

James Harrison (1814–66) was a Chester-based architect and early adopter of the Vernacular Revival style, which became nationally popular in the late nineteenth century. His work can also be seen in the building opposite (numbers 51 and 53 Bridge Street and 59 Bridge Street Row East), and he was responsible for restoring many of the city's medieval churches. Henry Welsby was a former excise officer turned vintner. His business, which included a shop and offices, occupied the premises until 1970. The Row level shop front dates to 1900–1910. In the twenty-first century, the Row and undercroft shops were split into separate businesses and have had a series of retail occupants. The upper storeys were converted to residential use around 2015. The building is constructed of painted stone-dressed brick and brown brick with a tiled roof at right-angles to Bridge Street.

Exterior: The building is four storeys including an undercroft and Row level, in a loose Gothic Revival style. The undercroft has a rendered shopfront to the street with an altered door and window. A projecting porch at the north and a shaped timber bracket at the south support a balcony projecting over the street in front of the Row walk.

The Row has renewed wooden balusters and a rail opening between unpainted yellow sandstone end-piers with stopped ovolo chamfers and cusped brackets on foliar corbels, supporting a bressumer with a stopped reeded chamfer. There are altered steps and a concrete footbridge across Pierpoint Lane dating to the 1970s, a sandstone riser and flag pavement to the balcony, and a concrete Row walk. The painted stone rear wall has a shopfront in a shoulder-arched opening with a central, shortened mid-nineteenth-century part-glazed three-panel door with a single-pane overlight and a single-pane window of vertical proportion to each side, all shouldered. South of the shopfront is a shoulder-arched passage entry with a door having a central reed and four panels, the lower pair raised and the upper pair with cusped heads beneath a plain overlight. The archway over the north end of the Row walk has moulded chamfers to a stone lintel on shaped brackets, with narrow stop-chamfered joists to the plastered ceiling.

The upper storeys are of stone-dressed brick with flush quoins. The third storey has a stone-corbelled four-light canted oriel window with two over two-pane sashes in shoulder-arched lights and a hipped lead roof. The fourth storey has a moulded band beneath the flush sill of a triple light window with two-pane sashes with arched heads. The stone-dressed front gable has a shaped kneeler, moulded coping and a foliar-headed octagonal finial.

The north face to Pierpoint Lane is of brown brick in irregular bond and is evidently older than the Bridge Street frontage and visible internal features. The third storey has two dual sash windows of four over four-panes with painted stone sills and cambered brick heads.

The rear has a probable later full-width segmental brick arch, infilled in the twentieth century with a weatherboarded face and evidence of a two-storey gabled rear wing, now demolished. There is a dual sash window and a single sash, each small and of two panes, to the third storey, and a dual sash of four over four panes to the fourth storey. The shaped kneeler and coping to the rear gable were probably added in 1858.

Interior: The undercroft is three steps down and is covered in modern linings. The Row storey has cornices, probably of 1858. The third and fourth storeys could not be inspected.