6, St Marys Street

Shop at 6 St Mary's Street, Ely

This is a two-storey brick shop building, originally constructed in the 17th century with significant additions and alterations in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The front elevation, which faces St Mary's Street, was refronted in the 19th century. The roof is slate-covered. The building is L-shaped in plan, with a rectangular range along the street front and a rear range extending back down the plot. The rear two-storey range is raised above a basement. A small mono-pitch two-storey block is attached to the rear. The painted brick front elevation contains a shop front at ground-floor level with a single casement window above. A parapet, shared with the adjacent building at No. 8, conceals the eaves. Brick stacks are present at the left rear of the front range and at the end of the main rear range.

The mid to late 19th-century shop front comprises a late 19th or early 20th-century three-light door with a brass kicking plate and stained-glass overlight, positioned to the left of a large plate-glass window above a plain stall riser and beneath three lights designed for decorative glass. Pilaster heads frame the openings, and a dentilled cornice sits above. Later additions include a canopy. To the left of the shop door is another doorway providing access to the rest of the property. Fenestration throughout is mostly modern.

Interior

Access between floors is via a timber staircase positioned at the junction of the front and rear ranges, which rises to the upper floor of the rear range. The lower flight balusters are boarded in and may not survive. The upper levels feature splat balusters with plain tapered shafts. The handrail is flat and plain, with thin chamfered rectangular newels. The newels are likely early 20th-century in date, while the painted balusters are probably 18th-century.

Very limited roof access exists above the stairs. The roof has been altered in the 19th century and later. Earlier timbers survive, notably several rafters of the rear pitch of the front range, which are visible within the room below and are carried by a purlin to which they are pegged. The opposite purlin at the front of the front range is modern. The visible section of the rear range roof is a simple A-frame with collars clasping a purlin, its rafters meeting at a ridge plank. This roof is 19th-century or later.

At ground-floor level in the front range is a single room which until recently housed shop accommodation. The door into the shop from the rear is mid to late 19th-century in date. The beam over this room runs axially and is plain with a rolled edge, dating to the 19th century, though it lies on the line of an earlier 17th-century beam over the adjacent entrance way.

The ground-floor partition between the shop and the entrance way is timber-framed, probably 17th-century, and remains intact. A central post houses two very long rising braces which pass over intermediate studs to which they are clout-nailed. Early 20th-century studs have been inserted at each end into what were probably original door openings. The partition opposite, dividing No. 6 from No. 8, is entirely an early 20th-century creation comprising studs with a decorative adzed effect. At its centre is a blocked doorway which once gave access between the two properties.

From the stair, the rear range is accessed on the two upper floors via doorways containing two-panel doors with HL hinges. The first-floor room contains a brick fireplace in a sub-Arts and Crafts style, with joinery featuring a decorative adzed finish dating from the early 20th-century.

History

By 1417, when Bishop Fordham conducted his survey, St Mary's Street (then known as High Row Street) had been established. Speed's Map of Ely of 1610 shows that the north side of St Mary's Street had been built up by that time, though the map lacks sufficient detail to identify individual buildings. Between 1610 and the middle of the 18th century, Ely experienced considerable development, with the number of buildings estimated at 609 by that time, and brick becoming the established building material, superseding the mixture of materials including timber-framing used earlier.

Speed's map was probably too early to depict No. 6 St Mary's Street, but internal evidence suggests some 17th-century fabric survives, notably the right-hand partition of the entrance way. The building is located some distance from the 17th-century market place, making it uncertain whether it was originally commercial premises, though its prominent location and the street name 'High Row Street' raise this possibility.

In the 18th century, the building was extended to the rear by a two-storey range with basement, and a splat-baluster stair was inserted to serve both ranges. In the 19th century, the building was refronted in common with No. 8, with corresponding roof alterations at that time. It may have been converted to a shop at this period, as the shop front dates to the mid to late 19th-century. A single-storey rear extension was also added to the 18th-century range. In the early 20th-century, a refurbishment campaign in a sub-Arts and Crafts style took place. At this time the two properties were linked, with the present ground-floor dividing wall, a sub-Arts and Crafts recreation of a 17th-century partition, containing a doorway. The 19th-century shop front survives, but all other fenestration is modern. Until recently, No. 6 operated as a confectionery and tobacco shop with bed and breakfast accommodation above.

The building is representative of the type of repeated recasting that urban buildings in prominent city-centre locations typically undergo. It contains evidence of various phases of work: a 17th-century timber-framed partition at the west end of the front range with an associated beam; an 18th-century two-storey rear range with two-panel doors and an altered splat-baluster staircase; and a fine mid to late 19th-century shop front.