2, Northgate Street

2 Northgate Street is a two-storey, five-bay house dating from the late 17th century with alterations to the main elevation in the last quarter of the 18th century. The building is double-depth on plan, with a projecting rear wing to the north. It is built from red brick, with a painted stucco main elevation.

The main elevation sits on a slightly projecting plinth and features rusticated quoins to the southern end, with a plain pilaster to the north at the junction with number 4. A central entrance doorway contains a six-panel raised and fielded door, set in an opening with a rectangular fanlight, moulded architrave and entablature with pulvinated frieze. The windows are six-over-six sashes, set in reveals, with slightly projecting keystones. The roof is hipped and carries two gabled dormers fitted with side-hung timber casement windows, all covered in Welsh slate. The side and rear elevations are of brick and retain their 17th-century mullioned and transomed windows with timber casements. A string course between the ground and first floors originally extended along the main elevation.

The interior contains a centrally-placed 18th-century staircase and a panelled room on the first floor of the same date.

The house has group value with the other buildings along both sides of Northgate Street. The centre of Warwick was radically altered by a fire on 5 September 1694, which began west of Northgate Street but spread when householders moved valuable furniture—already smouldering—to St Mary's Church at the south end of the street. The church itself caught fire, and flames rapidly spread along Northgate Street, destroying all houses on the east side and damaging those to the west. Some rear walls on the east side appear to have survived. Houses were rebuilt immediately after the fire, before the end of the 17th century, though with alterations later in the 18th century, including much of the detailing to their main elevations. Originally substantial private dwellings, by 1896 several were in commercial or professional use, or as lodgings, though some remained private family homes. By the early 21st century, the houses were in use as offices for district council departments, together with later 20th-century offices built to the rear.