Whitefriars Gate, 36-37 Much Park Street

Whitefriars Gate, 36-37 Much Park Street

This is a postern gatehouse to the Carmelite Friary, dating from the late 14th or 15th century, which was later converted to form two dwellings.

The front and rear elevations of the gatehouse are constructed from dressed red and green sandstone. The side elevations, originally timber-framed, have been replaced by brick. The roof is tiled. A northern wing is built in rendered masonry with a brick chimneystack and tiled roof.

The gatehouse is a rectangular range orientated roughly north-south, facing west onto Much Park Street. A secondary range abuts the north-east corner and projects eastwards.

The principal elevation of the gatehouse is a symmetrical two-storey composition with a central carriageway arch. Most of the ground floor is built in red sandstone, and the first floor is green sandstone with red stone dressings. On either side of the carriageway there is a doorway and a window, and there are two windows on the first floor. The northern doorway has an arched head in replacement stone; the southern door has a heavily weathered flat lintel. Ground floor windows are one-over-one sashes; the southern window lintel is chamfered, indicating the original, narrower opening. On the first floor the sashes are two-over-two. The carriageway opening is a four-centred arch with a deep cavetto moulding. The timber frame of the first floor, inserted in the late 16th or 17th century, is lower than the apex of the arch; the floor plate and studs are exposed.

Within the archway the northern wall is timber-framed with brick nogging on a sandstone plinth; these materials bear evidence of having been reused. The southern wall has been rebuilt in brick, probably in the 19th century. Joists cross the width of the opening and are reinforced by an axial beam, carried on later cross beams inserted into the brickwork.

The rear of the gatehouse is constructed in red sandstone. The central opening above the archway is thought to be the only window original to the elevation. The irregular openings on the left of the elevation bear evidence of having been inserted. On the left of the carriageway is a narrow doorway with an arched lintel, roughly in line with that on the front elevation; there appears to have been a corresponding doorway to the right of the carriageway, which has been blocked. To the right of this a former chimneystack projects from the building line; it has sandstone quoins, beyond which it is rebuilt in brick. Its position at the corner of the gatehouse suggests the building originally extended to the north. There is a monopitched scar in the masonry suggesting the absence of earlier structures present on mid-18th-century maps. Brick chimneystacks rise at either end of the roof, and there are two inserted raking dormers.

The rear range was built in two phases from west to east; this remains evident through the break in the roofline. The range is two storeys and has a pitched, tiled roof with a deep brick stack on the west gable. All doors and windows have been replaced, though their general arrangement has been preserved. On the north elevation the segmental openings, buttress and the first-floor weaver's window are notable features. Other elevations are largely blind.

Internally, the gatehouse as reconfigured is two storeys and an attic, and is two rooms deep. The principal rooms are at the front of the building, and service areas and stairs to the rear. On the ground floor, large fireplaces, possibly late 16th or 17th century, have been inserted to heat the front rooms; that in the southern room has wide brick jambs and a rendered masonry hood, and in the northern room has a single sandstone jamb and is built into the brick gable. The door and window openings in these rooms, though modified, retain stylistic detailing: splayed window openings, shouldered arches with slightly vaulted corbels. In the rear rooms the masonry of the eastern elevation bears various irregularities and modifications, interpreted possibly as niches and an early stair.

At first-floor level sections of the upper part of the carriageway arch are visible in the west wall. There is a sloping offset above the arch, stepping down on either side. There are window openings which bear evidence of having been widened, probably when the building was converted to two dwellings in the 16th or 17th century. The adjacent recesses, apparently original to the building, are likely to have served as cupboards. The transverse timber-framed dividing wall is also of the 16th or 17th century, built in reused timbers. The lateral subdividing wall, forming two rooms on each side of the first floor, is later, coinciding with the insertion of curved brick fireplaces in the late 18th or early 19th century.

In the attic, there are stone features at the north and south extremities of the west wall; these may relate to a truncated parapet structure. The roof, constructed from reused timbers, consists of two gable trusses and a central truss rising from the transverse timber-framed subdivision. The north and south trusses have been altered, and the central truss represents a better survival: it has a tie beam with slightly raking struts to the collar, with smaller vertical timbers suggesting it was always closed. Wind-braces rise from each truss to a single rank of purlins on either pitch of the roof. On the eastern pitch, raking dormer windows have been inserted. In the southern room there is a 19th-century brick fireplace with an 18th-century grate.

Dog-leg stairs rise on either side of the rear of the building to the rear of the large ground-floor fireplaces.

The interior of the rear range, following restoration after a fire, is an open-plan, double-height space. The party wall, which included a wide chimneystack, has been removed, as has the first floor, though the principal beams have been replaced, and one of the lesser fire-damaged beams has been reused. The fireplace is blocked, though the wide stack survives. A modern stair provides access to an opening into the northern staircase of the gatehouse.