63 Daisy Hill

63 Daisy Hill is a former house dating from the late 18th or early 19th century, subsequently altered in the 19th and 20th centuries for retail, warehouse and office use. The building is Grade II listed.

The structure is constructed of coursed sandstone, mostly covered externally with stucco and featuring painted ashlar dressings. The roof is covered with sandstone slate.

The building has a distinctive wedge-shaped plan, widest at its north end facing Daisy Hill and narrowing towards the south, with School Street bounding the west side and attached buildings on the east and south. It rises three storeys plus basement, with a hipped roof topped by a sandstone-bracketed eaves and cast-iron rainwater goods. Upper floors are stuccoed with incised lines imitating stonework.

The north elevation facing Daisy Hill comprises two bays. The ground floor features a late 20th-century fully-glazed shopfront with a recessed central entrance of glazed double doors and a deep signage fascia. The shopfront has a canted north-west corner and extends around the first bay of the west elevation onto School Street. The first-floor windows have painted surrounds with modern plate-glass glazing and are slightly taller than those above. The second-floor windows retain six-over-six sashes.

The west elevation onto School Street is three bays. At ground floor, the left bay incorporates part of the shopfront; the centre bay exposes coursed stonework where stucco has been removed, with a blocked and rendered doorway nearby. The right bay contains a window with plate-glass glazing and security bars, plus a panelled double-door entrance with overlight. The first-floor windows are plate-glass sashes; the second floor has six-over-six sashes to the left bay and later casements to the right bays. A modern 19th-century-style lantern lamp on a curved bracket is mounted between the upper floors of the right bays.

A probable mid-19th-century warehouse is attached to the south end; a very small early-20th-century single-storey infill structure fills the cutaway north-west corner between the two buildings and was incorporated internally in the late 20th century.

Interior description

Original partitions have been removed throughout, creating open spaces on all floors. Late 20th-century partitions of no special interest have been inserted at ground and first-floor levels. Some window architraves retain moulding whilst others have plain reveals. One 19th-century four-panel door survives; all others have been replaced. Late 20th and early 21st-century suspended ceilings, cable trunking and commercial fittings (not of special interest) are present on the ground floor and part of the first floor. Plain moulded cornicing is visible in places above the suspended ceiling.

The ground floor is largely opened into a single space with some modern wall cladding. A later stair flight runs alongside the west wall. A doorway in the rear external wall accesses a toilet in the adjoining infill structure. Exposed stonework and later brick repairs are visible to the rear wall.

The first floor features a large open room at the front extending the full width, with a wide chimneybreast to the east wall and an alcove with inserted shelving to the left. The rear section has been opened up with modern partitioning creating a storage room and corridor. Moulded cornicing and encased ceiling beams are visible.

The stair between first and second floors at the rear (south-east corner) dates probably from the mid-19th century, featuring a bracketed string, turned balusters and newel posts, a ramped handrail and a panelled under-stair cupboard; its balustrade is boarded over on the second-floor landing. An inserted doorway in the south wall opposite the stair once provided access to the neighbouring warehouse but is no longer in use.

The second floor forms a single opened-up space throughout, with substantial exposed ceiling beams and lath-and-plaster ceilings in places. Windows have simple moulded architraves. A chimneybreast survives to the east wall at the front; another on the east side has been adapted to form a built-in cupboard with shallow shelving. Exposed stonework appears where plaster has been removed. Roof structure visible through a ceiling hatch comprises king-post trusses with additional braces and side purlins; the stone slates are laid directly on battens and rafters.

The basement is accessed by a later timber ladder-style stair and has substantial ceiling beams supported by a slender cast-iron column and timber uprights. Two blocked windows exist to the south wall adjoining the warehouse, and stone shelving for a copper survives at the south-west corner.