9 and 9a, Southgate Street

Merchant's house, now shop and restaurant, at 9 and 9A Southgate Street, Gloucester. Built in 1664–5 for Thomas Yate, an apothecary and alderman of Gloucester. The date 1650, inscribed on a chimneypiece, may predate construction by several years and commemorates Yate's first marriage. The building was restored in 1992 for Gloucester City Council.

The structure comprises a timber-framed front block with a brick rear wing (rebuilt in brick in the 19th century). It is constructed of timber frame and brick with a timber-panelled façade and a tiled roof with hipped dormers. The exterior presents three storeys, an attic and cellar. The ground floor has a 20th-century shop-front, while the upper floors feature three bays, each jettied at first and second-floor levels with moulded timber cornices planted on the bressumers and a moulded timber crowning cornice. On each upper floor are three large 18th-century sash windows with glazing bars (4x4 panes) in original openings. The first-floor windows have moulded architraves flanked by carved drops, with a continuous sill board; below each window is a pair of raised panels, and above a shallow pediment with carved tympanum. The second-floor windows are segmental-pedimented with single panels below carved in an oval strapwork pattern; pilasters flank either end of the front on both floors. Two hipped roof dormers each contain a pair of leadlight casements. The rear wing has mid-19th-century 2/2-pane sashes.

The ground-floor shop contains no visible features of historical interest. An entrance passage on the right leads to a 19th-century staircase. The upper floors were remodelled in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first-floor front room features decorative plasterwork with cherubs and cartouches to the ceiling; bolection-moulded panelling and frieze with lozenges and lions' masks; and a mid-19th-century moulded fire surround within a magnificent carved surround decorated with cherubs, cornucopia and other ornaments, with a segmental pediment to the overmantel broken by the arms of Yate crossed with Berkeley and the date 1650. A mid-17th-century dog-leg stair rises from the first to the third floor with turned balusters to the closed string and large turned finials to the newels. The second-floor panelled room contains a lozenged frieze, bracketed cornice, and a very fine carved stone fire surround featuring addorsed lions flanking a sheep in a nowy-headed tympanum, a frieze with foliate and floral carving, and a bracketed cornice. The attic has butt purlins to the central truss and timber-framed side walls.

The building is of particular note for the outstanding architectural quality of its carved and panelled timber façade. Fine traces of colour in the grain show that this woodwork was once painted an orange-russet colour. Thomas Yate was a younger son of the Yate family, whose family home was at Arlingham, south of Gloucester. The date on the overmantel commemorates his first marriage in 1650. Pat Hughes has suggested that the first four sons are portrayed as cherubs in the plasterwork and that the other heads show Thomas and his two wives. In the 19th century, the property was known as the "Old Blue Shop", when it was the property of a bluemaker named James Lee; traces of a dark grey-blue substance have been found on the façade and under the floorboards.