38 High Street

38 High Street is a townhouse with rear wool warehouse, built in 1760 for William Chippendale. It was converted to newspaper premises in 1874 and is now in use as a shop with offices.

The building is constructed in buff sandstone with slate roofs, with red brick used for the western part of the rear wing. The plan comprises a three-storey domestic front range on the west side of the High Street, connected to a long rear commercial wing also of three storeys built in two phases. A flat-roofed extension bridges the ginnel between the front range and rear wing, partially obscuring the façade of the latter.

The front façade faces east and is built of squared rubble in diminishing courses, framed by ashlar giant pilasters and a heavy moulded cornice, with a plain projecting band between the first and second floors. The ground floor has timber shopfront pilasters with consoles linked by a timber fascia with cornice. To the left is a panelled entry to the ginnel (formerly Tasker's Yard) with a wrought-iron gate and grille. To the right is an early twentieth-century shopfront with ashlar stall riser and delicate glazing bars and colonnettes to the curved outer windows and recessed centre windows, all with arched transom lights flanking the central glazed door. The entrance has a marble threshold and an Art Nouveau mosaic recording "Skipton Stationery Co Ltd", while the ginnel entry has a similar mosaic without lettering. The upper floor windows all have moulded stone cases: three tall horned sashes without glazing bars to the first floor and two squarer horned sashes to the top floor. The ridge has alternate cresting.

The south wall of the front range is abutted by a two-storey shop; above this the wall is rendered with stone coping, prominent moulded kneelers and a corniced ridge stack. The north wall is obscured by the adjoining buildings at 34 and 36 High Street.

The three-storey rear wing has blind stone north walls, partially abutted by adjacent buildings, with quoins defining a phase break. The front south wall of this wing is also quoined at the phase break. The eastern section is in rubble walling. At its east end is a partially blocked round-arched doorway now overhung by a first-and-second-floor rear extension to the front range. To the left is a tall stepped stair window formed by a low light linking an un-horned ground-floor sash window with a pair of horned sash windows offset to the left at the first floor; the second floor has similar paired windows above. Further west is another un-horned ground-floor window and an altered entrance with three overlights, above which are stacked paired horned sash windows. To the west of this is a smaller blocked doorway. All openings have stone surrounds.

The western section of the rear wing is in red brick (painted at the ground floor) with four replacement windows to each floor; the upper-floor windows sit in openings with stone sills and lintels. The west gable of this section has a second-floor window. The wall below is obscured by the abutting two-storey stone building to the west.

The upper floors of the front range have inserted dry linings and suspended ceilings but retain a roof structure of hewn timbers and a re-set eighteenth-century white marble fireplace to the first floor with reeded pilasters and frieze and red-marble panel and roundels. The rear range has an inserted modern steel staircase.