72-74 Westgate

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement on 14 November 2023 to amend details in the description add Historical note and Source

SE 3320 NW 2/265

WESTGATE (North Side) Nos 72 and 74

(Formerly listed as Nos 72 and 74 (Yorks County Savings Bank))

GV II

Two early C19 townhouses with alterations. Each townhouse is of three storeys and two bays; the western house (number 74) projecting slightly. Both have low-pitched stone flagged roofs and moulded stone cornices, that to 72 Westgate having modillions and a thin triglyph frieze. Built of red brick with gauged bricks forming flat arches to the window openings, these having stone cills and replaced sash windows. The ground floor frontage to Westgate has a mirrored pair of early C20 stone-built neoclassical office/shop fronts with the doorways set apart.

Westgate was one of Wakefield’s four principal streets that developed in the medieval period with long narrow burgage plots extending back from the street frontage. During the C17 and C18, Westgate became a popular residential district for the mercantile classes, with large townhouses fronting onto Westgate, with further, often commercial and industrial buildings extending to the rear. This included a large townhouse, owned by an attorney Alan Johnson, occupying what is now the start of Cheapside and the flanking buildings 70 and 72 Westgate. After he died in 1795, this house was demolished to create a new street lined with buildings plots, this being Cheapside which was established by 1802. What is now 72 Westgate was built as a small townhouse by Henry Soulby, a wool stapler (merchant), his brother John building a matching property at 70 Westgate. Number 74 Westgate was built separately, probably around the same time but was presumably in the same ownership when their ground floors were remodelled with stone frontages to form commercial premises. Early photographs show that 72 Westgate had a first-floor canted bay window similar to that belonging to 70 Westgate. In the C20, the joint property 72 & 74 Westgate was a branch of the Yorkshire County Savings Bank, before becoming a solicitor’s office in 1979. It was converted into a bar in 1991.

Included partly for group value.

Listing NGR: SE3303220769