40 and 42, High Street

This building comprises a shop and hotel, now a pair of shops, constructed in 1904 by William Webb of Whitchurch. The building is red brick with a cast-iron facade featuring a red brick parapet. The roof is hidden behind the parapet. The front range is accompanied by two long ranges extending at right angles to the rear. The building is three storeys high.

The cast-iron facade has a four-bay, two-bay, three-bay arrangement, divided by panelled square piers. The first floor features a round-arched arcade with columns and pierced spandrels; the second floor has similar columns and pierced spandrels, partially obscured by a deep fascia beam. Floors are separated by a pierced cast-iron frieze. The parapet has a moulded sandstone coping, and a brick stack is located off-centre to the right. The first and second floors have plate-glass sash windows. A cast-iron shop front is present on the left, with two plate glass windows and a pair of cast-iron columns flanking a central half-glazed door. A 20th-century shop front replaces what was likely the entrance to a former hotel, and deep 20th-century fascias are also present. A central carriage entrance is flanked by square cast-iron piers.

The ranges at the rear consist of an eight-bay, two-storey left-hand range with pilaster strips and first-floor segmental-headed three-light wooden mullioned and transomed windows. Large ground-floor segmental-headed windows on this range are now blocked. The right-hand range is three storeys high, with windows featuring stone cills and lintels. A passageway is closed off at the far end by a two-storey range, with a carriageway beneath.

Some sources suggest an alternative construction date of 1901-2. The site was previously occupied by Joyce’s, the renowned Whitchurch clockmakers. Around 1904, W.C. Birchall, an ironmonger, commissioned the building. Birchall’s business occupied the left-hand portion, while the Alexandra Temperance Hotel was located on the right, with a restaurant on the ground floor and accommodation and billiard rooms above. The iron facade was cast at McFarlane’s works in Glasgow.