37, Foregate Street

WORCESTER

SO8455SE FRIAR STREET 620-1/12/255 (West side) 22/05/54 No.37

GV II

House, now shop and offices. c1730 with later additions and alterations including c1930's shop front. Reddish-orange brick in Flemish bond with stone sills, keystones and cornice; stucco to ground floor; plain tile roof and end reddish-orange brick stacks with oversailing courses and pots. 3 storeys plus attic, 3 first-floor windows. First and second floors have 1/1 sashes in near-flush frames and with flat arches of gauged brick and keystones, those to first floor are fluted and have cornices, those to second floor have floral motif, moulded sills. Wide pediment has acanthus modillions and central oculus, otherwise crowning coped parapet. Raised and coped gable ends. Ground floor: shaped plinth; entrance to left a panelled door in Doric porch with triglyphs and metopes. Window with bronze frame and acanthus motif at right. Frieze and cornice over ground floor. INTERIOR: panelled rooms to first- and ground-floors, with marble fireplaces; panelled doors in moulded architraves; fine dogleg staircase to rear with slender turned balusters with nops, large cross-section ramped handrail, carved brackets to open string, curtail step. HISTORICAL NOTE: during the C18 Foregate Street was known as 'the mall' and Tymbs' Worcester Guide of 1802 notes, 'the Foregate Street itself, by being well paved and sufficiently broad to admit a full circulation of air seems to be generally resorted to as a fashionable promenade.' An unusually well-preserved example of an early Georgian town house interior. The Shire Hall, Statue of Queen Victoria, City Museum and Library, and nos 15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 28, nos 33-46 (consecutive) and No.49, Foregate Street (qqv) form a significant group. (Tymbs: Worcester Guide: Worcester: 1802-: 60; Worcestershire Historical Society Occasional Papers: Whitehead D: Urban Renewal and Suburban Growth: The Shaping of Georgian Worcester: 1989-: 12).