69 And 71, Micklegate

Two houses, now one shop, on Micklegate in York. The building is early 17th century in origin but was largely rebuilt around 1745, with further alterations and extensions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Mid-18th century alterations were carried out for Reverend Philemon Marsh, Rector of the Church of St Martin-cum-Gregory.

The structure is timber-framed but now encased in brick laid in Flemish bond, painted at the front. A plain parapet with stone coping masks parallel roofs that are gabled to the street, each with a brick stack at the rear. The rear wing to No.69 has a hipped slate roof.

The exterior presents a three-storey, five-window front. The ground floor of both properties is occupied by fluted pilaster and cornice shopfronts with glazed doors recessed between half-canted plate glass windows. All upper floor windows are 12-pane sashes set beneath painted flat arches of gauged brick, with painted stone sills. The end and centre windows on the second floor are blind. One-course raised bands appear at second floor and parapet levels. Original rainwater goods are present at the right end, featuring a unicorn crest of the Marshes on a rectangular hopper.

At the rear, No.71 has a tripartite sash window with a 16-pane centre sash. Other windows on the first and second floors of both houses have segmental arches. A rainwater head is dated 1674.

The interior retains remnants of the original timber-frame visible on the ground floor at the rear of both front rooms and on the first floor in the rear room of No.71, which has a possible studded partition wall.

On the ground floor of No.69, a cantilevered staircase with a column on vase balusters and a moulded swept-up handrail on a turned newel rises to the first floor around a full-height well. The well is lined with corresponding dado panelling and rail, and lit by a lantern in a coved ceiling with moulded dentil cornice. The rear room has 17th-century panelling reset over a 19th-century fireplace on the left and rear walls, with a moulded cornice. In No.71, a single fluted pilaster respond to a former arch survives at the foot of a transverse staircase, with remnants of moulded and dentil cornices surviving in both front and back rooms.

On the first floor of No.69, a close string secondary staircase, originally rising from the ground floor, has turned balusters, a moulded handrail, and square newels. At the head of the principal staircase is a keyed round arch on pilaster responds with moulded imposts. The front room has a moulded cornice and a cased axial beam, while the rear room has a door of eight raised and fielded panels. In No.71, a close string staircase with stick balusters and a turned newel rises to the second floor, boxed in below with re-used 17th-century panelling and a door forming an under-stair closet. An eight-panel door leads to the front room, which has cased intersecting axial and transverse beams carried on a fluted Doric column. A moulded cornice survives in the rear room.

On the second floor of No.69, the secondary staircase balustrade is carried across the main staircase well, with a six-panel door to the front room. A 19th-century basket grate is present in the passage of No.71. In both front rooms, 18th-century plank floorboards are retained. 17th-century gabled roofs are cut across by end and centre windows inserted during the 18th-century re-fronting.