147, Oxford Street

147 Oxford Street is a shop with offices above, built in 1897 to the designs of Gordon, Lowther and Gunton. It has a late 20th-century shop front. The building is four storeys high, plus a basement and a gable attic.

The exterior is of Portland stone and gauged red brick, with stock brick to the rear. It is two bays wide, displaying an opulent façade in an eclectic neo-Jacobean and Flemish Renaissance style, featuring extensive relief carving of strapwork, masks, scrolls, foliage, and other decorative elements. The ground floor shop front is modern, although remnants of the original black granite surround may remain beneath the cladding. The first floor has tapering strapwork pilasters and a pair of tripartite round-arched French windows recessed behind elliptical drop-keyed arches supported on bulbous, foliated piers, each with an elliptical balconette. The second and third floors are quoined and have paired oriels with elaborate corbels beneath; the oriel to the second floor has a shell-headed top with a conical-headed vase on a scrolled console, while that to the third floor has an urn. The windows are mullioned and transomed, with a carved frieze between the second and third floors. The elaborate scrolled Flemish gable is surmounted by a miniature broken pediment and finial; the gable’s central window has strapwork cresting and a curved balconette with scrolled openwork balustrade. The windows are metal-framed, with replaced glazing; the rear windows are timber sash.

The shop premises have been significantly altered and lack original features. The cantilevered staircase has a cast-iron balustrade with a timber handrail, and a timber glazed lantern above. The upper floor rooms have also been altered, but retain some contemporary chimneypieces and plaster cornices.

The building was constructed in 1897 for John Robbins, a chemist, on the site of two late Georgian terraced houses. It was occupied by the Wholesale Co-operative Wine Association from 1898 to 1903, then by Rashleigh, Phipps and Co., retailers of electrical fittings, before being used for various retail purposes.

The building is designated as being of special architectural interest due to its remarkably ornate late 19th-century design, employing a neo-Jacobean/Flemish Renaissance style with lavish carved stonework. Internal features, including the staircase, also contribute to its special interest.