42, Fore Street

This is a shop with a residential upper floor, built around 1825, with later 19th and 20th century alterations. The front is stuccoed, while the rear is yellow-grey stock brick with a plastered second floor. The Welsh slated roof is concealed behind a front parapet cornice.

The exterior is three storeys and two bays wide. It features a standard late Georgian urban facade embellished with modelled stucco decorative motifs. A ground floor timber shopfront, matching the style of the facade, is present. Tapered roll mouldings outline a full-height pylon across the elevation, topped with a bold cavetto cornice decorated with modelled scarabs. The first and second floors have recessed 12-pane sash windows, with the second-floor windows being of a shorter height. Projecting tapered architrave surrounds, resembling pylons, feature roll and cavetto cornices enriched with modelled winged globes above the first-floor windows.

The original Egyptian-style shopfront is largely unaltered, apart from the late 19th century replacement of the original small-paned display windows with large plate-glass sashes. It features tapered slim pilasters with foliated capitals, metal grilles below the sills, and recessed twin-leaf three-quarter glazed entrance doors with a fanlight above. A full-width fascia is topped with a bold cavetto cornice enriched with moulded scarabs, tablets, and a central winged globe motif. A long rear outshut is attached.

The ground floor interior was completely remodelled and is used as a restaurant, along with the basement. The upper floors were not inspected.

The building reflects the popularity of Egyptian Revival architecture, which emerged following the Napoleonic Wars and the opening of William Bullock's Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in 1812. Most urban buildings in the Egyptian style built over the following two decades, including this one, are linked to The Egyptian Hall.

A polychromatic colour scheme was introduced in the 1980s, inspired by The Egyptian House in Penzance (around 1835), which had been restored by The Landmark Trust in 1973.