Numbers 36 And 38 Street Numbers 38 And 40 Row

Two shops built in 1857 by the architect T.M. Penson for William and Charles Brown, occupying a site of former undercrofts and town houses. The tenant of No.38 Eastgate Row was Bolland, a wedding cake maker by appointment to Queen Victoria.

The buildings comprise three storeys including undercrofts and Row, plus attics in the roof. The front has timber framing with plaster panels and banded brown tile roofs.

The shopfronts to the street have been altered. No.36 has a recessed front with slender colonnette mullions. No.38 has eight sandstone steps leading to the Row and two low modern windows. The end-piers are rendered and painted, probably of stone.

The Row storey features a timber Row-front rail on turned balusters at No.38 and modern steel railing at No.40. A boarded stallboard extends 2.03 metres from front to back at No.38, with a terrazzo Row walk. No.40 has a recess in place of the stallboard and a tiled Row walk. Both shopfronts have symmetrical moulded patterns to the ceiling and a bressumer with carved arrises on shaped brackets.

The third storey of No.38 has a shallow square six-light oriel on a carved and moulded corbel, with tracery above cusped ogee lights. Close-studded panels flank the oriel, divided by a cross-rail at sill level. No.40 carries foliar corbels on each end-pier decorated with the initials PB and a Cheshire sheaf, supporting colonnettes before each corner post. A row of fourteen small cusped panels runs across, with a pair of three-light windows with colonnettes at each side and a spirally-moulded colonnette at centre. The lights have cusped heads with tracery above. The timber framing to each side of the windows is idiosyncratic.

The fourth storey of No.38 carries the planes of the oriel up to the gable. A row of small-framed panels in pairs is divided by colonnettes, with floor and sill strings. Two mullioned two-light windows have cusped-arch heads and tracery above. Small-framing to the sides and above the windows features quatrefoil bracing. Shields appear on each corner-post. A spirally-moulded colonnette on a carved-head corbel rises from the centre-post to the gable apex. The bargeboards are richly carved and pierced, with a finial replaced in terracotta.

No.40's fourth storey has moulded floor and sill beams, a row of ten ornate small panels with colonnettes and five quasi-armorial shields. A two-light casement with tracery above cusped arches is flanked by narrow panels, with curved braces in the gable apex. The bargeboards are richly carved and pierced, with a carved finial.

Interior surfaces in the undercrofts, part of Nos.28 and 38 Street, are clad. No.38 Row, now part of Nos.34 and 40 Row, retains some pilasters and cornices. An open-well stair features a painted rail on an ornate cast-iron balustrade. The third storey has a panelled barrel vault with leaded glazing in the upper skylight panels and a glazed dome over the stair. No.40 Row has a probably early twentieth-century stair in a manner appropriate to an elegant drapery store.