Number 12 Row Number 12 Street

NUMBER 12 EASTGATE STREET AND ROW, CHESTER

A shop and ancillary residential accommodation built in 1861 on the site of a medieval town house. The original building, dating to the 13th or 14th century, featured a two-bay vaulted undercroft which was demolished when the present structure was erected. It was designed by architect G Williams of Liverpool for Messrs Beckett and Co., drapers. Williams likely went on to design No. 33 Eastgate Street (now National Westminster Bank) in Classical style in 1859-60.

The building comprises an undercroft shop, Row shop (the traditional elevated shop found in Chester's historic covered passages), and three storeys of residential or storage space above, topped with an attic. Construction combines timber-framing with plaster panels, some sandstone elements, and brick to the rear, with a banded tile roof and a front gable running parallel to the street.

The undercroft is accessed by a flight of nine sandstone steps descending to the shop level. The main entrance to the Row is approached by a central flight of ten sandstone steps, flanked by modern shopfronts. Painted stone end-piers match those of the adjacent No. 10 Street. An ornate cast-iron quatrefoil-in-circle railing guards the Row front and sides. Above each side of the steps stands an ornamented timber post. The stallboard slopes gently from front to back over a distance of 1.82 metres. A faded gilt sign on the inner face of the east end-pier advertises "SILKS, DRESS FABRICS, LINEN, HOSIERY, GLOVES, FURS, GARNITURES, ARTICLES DE PARIS". The Row walk is finished in terrazzo with a mosaic border, though now damaged.

The third storey features a row of panels (largely obscured by a modern nameboard) beneath a continuous window of 3;2;3 two-pane lights. These lights are separated by colonnettes with latticed surfaces and capitals of 14th-century form, each crowned with a St Andrew's cross containing a trefoil in each triangle. Patterned quadrant brackets support the bressumer at the Row top.

The fourth storey projects forward on an ornately stopped-chamfered jetty-beam, above which runs a row of sixteen quatrefoil panels. Four two-pane sash windows flank side panels with criss-cross bracing, with a small corner-balcony at each end featuring square posts and handrails on turned balusters.

The jettied front gable is exceptionally ornate, marked and painted in plaster with hollow-lozenge, St Andrew's cross, and rectangular framing patterns. Three spirally-moulded colonnettes support a mullioned window of four two-pane sashes set on a jettied sill-beam. The gable is completed with an ornate head-beam, cusped bargeboards, end finials, and a central drop-finial.

The undercroft surfaces are now covered in textured plaster, though the medieval sandstone sidewalls may survive in part beneath. The Row shop is divided internally by a central row of cast-iron debased Doric columns carrying a longitudinal cast-iron II beam. An ornate cast-iron spiral stair exists within the space but is now concealed. The third storey contains a row of approximately five cast-iron Corinthian columns. Upper storeys retain their original door architraves and small-pane rear sash windows. The building postdates the adjacent No. 10 Street, as evidenced by the architectural detailing visible from the fourth-floor balcony of No. 12.