12-20, WALLGATE

A row of five shops with offices above, built in 1880, with later alterations; the shop front of number 20 dates from 1930 and was designed by E Pollard & Co of London. The building is constructed of brick with limestone dressings, and is in a Free Italianate commercial style.

The exterior has three storeys and a regular five-window range, featuring rusticated quoins and a moulded eaves cornice with console brackets. The ground floor has altered shop fronts, some of which are believed to conceal original moulded cornices, consoles, and cast-iron barley-sugar columns. Number 20 has an Art Deco style shop front with a polished granite frame and fascia, originally displaying the name "ASHTON'S" in metal lettering, now replaced with "NEWSAGENTS" in a similar style. It also has a recessed window, a deeply-inset glazed door to the right, and a frosted glass frieze with etched geometric motifs and the street number in an octagonal surround – a rare survival. The upper floors have paired windows, alternately segmental-headed and round-headed, with shafts having bell bases and foliated capitals, linked by impost bands and deep sillbands.

At the rear, there is a regular eleven-window range with mostly unhorned sashes lacking glazing bars, and three chimney stacks on the rear roof slope. The interior includes cast-iron partition walls between the ground-floor shop units.

The building forms a group with numbers 6-10 (Moot Hall Chambers) to the right, and number 22 to the left, and contributes significantly to the centre of Wigan.