NOS. 14 AND 15 THE GRAPES (NO. 14)

WESTGATE STREET 656-1/40/1841 (South side) Nos.14 AND 15 The Grapes (No.14) 12/06/50

GV II*

Pair of houses, with shop and public house. C17 fabric with early C18 frontage. MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roofs. EXTERIOR: Three storeys and attic, three+one+three windows, all eighteen-pane sashes in narrow bolection mould architraves plus thin pilasters to scroll heads and entablature as full width cornices at first and second floors, and moulded sills above panelled aprons. Blind lights to bays one and three, top floor, and bay two, second floor. Central bay has six-panel door in ashlar surround framed by Roman Doric three-quarter columns, with Ionic and Corinthian to upper levels, each with entablature, and with broken pediment to second floor. The Grapes public house has a mid C19 pilaster front with modern windows to ground floor, with central door. No.15 has a modern shopfront of no interest at all. Full-height chimneystacks at each end. Rear of The Grapes has later gabled wing, in brick. INTERIOR: Not inspected, but former list refers to fine ribbed plaster Jacobean ceiling, with three main centres with escutcheons of double headed eagle and leopard's head, belonging to Charles Granville, 2nd Earl of Bath, 1683. Heavy dado and bold architraves are 1720. This is a notable survival from the pre-Wood era, with a richly elaborated front in the 'bucolic Baroque' phase of Bath architecture (Mowl and Earnshaw, 47). The Combination of earlier internal fabric and this notable front (let down by the shop front) Makes for an important survival in this formerly very prominent Street, one of the main axes of the city prior to its extra- Mural expansion. SOURCES: Bath Archaeological Trust/RCHM England: 'Georgian Bath' Ordnance Survey Historical Map (Southampton 1989); Graham Finch, Bath City Council Shopfront Record (1992); Tim Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, 'John Wood. Architect of Obsession' (1988), 47.

Listing NGR: ST7492364753