Description

CHESTER CITY (IM)

SJ4066SE BRIDGE STREET AND ROW 595-1/4/53 (West side) 10/01/72 Nos.48 & 50 Street and Nos.48, 50 & 52 Row (Three Old Arches) (Formerly Listed as: BRIDGE STREET Nos 48 & 50 Street & Nos 50 & 52 Row)

GV I

An undercroft and town house, with No.52 Street (qv), now with Nos 44 & 46 Street and Row (qv) a department store. c1200, early to mid C14, late C18, C19 and C20. Sandstone and brick, painted; grey slate roofs hipped to fronts, ridges at right-angle to the street. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys including undercroft and Row levels. Features of special interest are the 3 stone arches, probably the earliest identified shopfront in England, at front of No.48 and the great hall across both street numbers, the largest in the Row buildings of Chester; No.52 Street is on the site of the former medieval service wing. No.48: Three Old Arches: the shopfront to the street is C19 and C20 with central entrance, display window of one pane north and a 4-pane flush sash, south; openings have mid-to-late C19 cases with a cornice above on 6 brackets. The piers of the 3 arches pass through undercroft, altered, and Row storey. The Row front has 4 piers, chamfered front and back, and 3 round arches chamfered to front; the spandrels, flush to front and with voussoirs chamfered to front only, are less than half the pier-thickness and supported the base-plate of the former timber-framed upper structure. Plain cast-iron stick balusters and rail to Row front in each archway; consistent with the early dating, there is no stallboard; granolithic Row walk; the rendered wall to rear of Row has a flush sash of 8;12;8 panes with shutters on gudgeon hinges, a flush 12-pane sash and a door of 6 margined panels; a massive beam across the Row, north, and an exposed oak beam, south; plastered ceiling; at the north end of the Row modern double doors lead to No.50. The third and fourth storeys are brick, with flush quoins at corner; 3 flush sashes to the third storey have painted stone sills and gauged brick heads with flush keystones; the fourth storey has a tripartite sash of 4;12;4 panes, removed for repair when inspected; plain coped parapet. No.50 has rendered plinth, wood pilasters, central entrance, a 1-pane window to each side and a cornice on shaped brackets.

The upper storeys are brick. The Row is enclosed; 2 nearly-flush 16-pane sashes with painted stone sills and cambered brick heads; the third storey has 2 similar sashes; the fourth storey has a tripartite 4;12;4 pane sash removed for repair when inspected; plain stone coping. The rear of Nos 48 & 50 have C20 extensions. INTERIOR: the undercroft of No.48 has cast-iron columns in place of two 2-centred double-chamfered arches on an octagonal central pier, removed c1900; No.50 retains the slightly-pointed early-to-mid C14 arch on shallow-moulded half-octagon piers; the pier-bases are below present floor level, with a C18-C19 rock-cut cellar beneath. The Row storey contains substantial elements of the C14 stone hall, parallel with the street; the east and north walls, with much masonry intact, establish dimensions of 12.4m north to south by 8.88m east to west. The east wall has the 2-centred archway of the front opening to the former screens passage, south, with roll and hollow mouldings on the outer side and a square order rebated under a segmental relieving arch on the hall side, with vertical grooves, east, for the former buttery partition and west for the screen; the adjacent archway, probably formerly to a stair, is narrow, 2-centred, chamfered to the hall but plain to the outer side, under a chamfered relieving arch; immediately north a chamfered segmental-arched opening, formerly to the shop; by the north corner a fourth archway, probably formerly to a private room associated with the shop; the archway chamfers have pyramidal stops. A C16 open fireplace with moulded bressumer is central on the north wall, its position suggesting a possibly earlier origin, now contains a C19 cast-iron range; a cambered oak inglenook-bressumer on the south wall; now plastered, the south and west walls are probably post-medieval. No individual features of special interest are visible in the third or fourth storeys. (Chester Rows Research Project: Harris R: Archive, Bridge Street West: 1989-).

Listing NGR: SJ4053566121

External Links

• Three Old Arches at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7797678

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)