Numbers 28 And 30 Row Booth Mansion Numbers 28-34 Street

NUMBERS 28 AND 30 ROW, BOOTH MANSION, NUMBERS 28–34 WATERGATE STREET, CHESTER

Two undercrofts and town houses, comprising a Grade I listed building of exceptional historical importance.

The site contains a 13th-century undercroft, largely rebuilt from Row level upward in 1700 for George Booth as the Chester mansion of the Booths of Dunham Massey. The building was converted to Assembly Rooms around 1740 and is now occupied by Sotheby's Auction galleries. It retains medieval stonework and timber together with 18th-century brickwork and later extensions, all roofed in grey slate.

EXTERIOR

The undercroft frontages face Watergate Street with painted stone. The eastern undercroft (No.28 Street) has a pair of double doors with two panels below a larger glazed panel, with a one-pane window further east. The central undercroft (No.30 Street) has double doors with one panel in a recessed porch with wrought-iron gates to each side. The western undercroft (No.32–34 Street) has modern glazed double doors, two one-pane windows, and a small shopfront with a recessed door of two panels below a larger glazed panel.

The Row front features end and central piers with Tuscan responds. Three Tuscan columns carry the bressumer over each bay, with one additional column carrying a parallel beam behind each bay. The east and central piers and the pointed arches they carry over the Row walk, now rendered, are 13th-century work, formerly at each end of the gallery of the eastern medieval town house. The west pier of the former western house carries a rendered beam over the Row walk, probably replacing a former arch.

No.28 Row and No.30 Row have rendered frontages to the Row walk. Each has a tripartite sash window, formerly of 12;12;12 panes with the lower glazing bars now removed. No.28 has a door of six fielded panels; No.30 has a replaced blocked six-panel door.

The bressumer above the Row, on brackets from piers, carries a dentilled cornice. The third and fourth storeys are built in brown Flemish bond brickwork with rusticated stone quoins, plain floor-band, and an ornate medallion cornice returned at the ends. The facade projects from the street line and is slightly angled to be seen from the Cross.

The third storey has eight leaded cross windows with baluster mullions above the transoms. The fourth storey has eight six-pane sashes, just taller than square. The windows all have painted moulded stone sills and gauged brick flat arches. The roof has its ridge parallel with the street and short hips in front of end gables with chimneys. There are four slate-cheeked gabled dormers with replaced two-pane casements. Later extensions conceal the rear elevation.

INTERIOR

The eastern undercroft measures 7.0 by 13.0 metres and is one and a half plot widths. It contains a central stone arcade of five bays, now truncated to four, with two-centred arches on octagonal piers. The coursed sandstone side walls have corbels supporting closely-spaced massive joists dendro-dated to 1260–1280, halved over the arcade. There is a blocked rebated two-centre arched doorway and two stone cupboards in the rear wall.

The western undercroft measures 8.0 by 10.7 metres and has a samson-post central arcade of timbers dendro-dated to circa 1260–1280, now filled with rubble brickwork. A rear extension to the undercroft has two parallel pointed barrel-vaults built of wedge-shaped stones.

Throughout its height, the east party wall of the eastern medieval house survives, visible from No.26 Row, with a coved cornice at the head of its east face. Like many Row properties, there is a thick rubble-filled floor between undercrofts and Row level, possibly for fire-proofing between the medieval commercial and domestic premises.

A late 13th-century arched doorway of oak in the east house marks the front of the medieval hall, set back further than usual, probably to allow for a service or stair bay between shop and hall. The present stair hall, which approximately coincides with the former great hall, has a 13th-century stone corbel shaped as a crouching man at the centre of its west wall, probably a support for the former principal truss.

A slightly altered Jacobean open-well stair with shaped splat balusters, inserted in the south-east corner of the hall, leads to the third and fourth storeys. Details of other rooms at Row level and on the fourth and attic storeys are concealed by modern finishes and partitions.

At the front of the third storey is a splendid early 18th-century Assembly Room measuring approximately 16 by 10 metres, occupying the full width of the mansion. Nib walls projecting from the front and back suggest that two principal rooms were thrown together in the 1740s when the mansion became assembly rooms. The room is panelled in oak, with one row of panels below the dado and a tall panel surmounted by a short panel below the cornice. The fireplace against the east wall has an overmantel of one panel. Each half of the room has a double door with three panels to each leaf in its rear wall. Double doors of similar design have been inserted in the east wall to give access to No.26 Row.