Description

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement on 19 February 2025 to update the description and add Source and reformat the text to current standards

SJ4066SE
595-1/4/172

CHESTER CITY (IM)
EASTGATE STREET AND ROW (South side)
No.10 Street and Nos.8 & 10 Row

GV
II

10 Eastgate Street and 8 and 10 Eastgate Row South form an undercroft and Row shops below a former townhouse. It was built in the Vernacular Revival style in 1861 by George Williams who designed this and the adjacent building (12 Eastgate Street and 12 Eastgate Row South). The building is an early example of the emerging style, and had timbers applied to plaster panels with a purely decorative function. Williams was previously known for his classical architecture, including the National Westminster Bank at 33 Eastgate Street, which was built in 1859-1860. In the early C20 the two Row properties were separate units, with 10 Eastgate Row being in office use, but by the mid-C20 they had been altered into a single retail unit. The undercroft also underwent internal alterations and had a new shopfront in the mid-to-late C20. The two upper storeys are now (2024) in retail and storage use. The building is constructed of sandstone and timber framing, part of which is probably false, with plaster panels. It has a grey-slate roof, with its ridge parallel with Eastgate Street.

EXTERIOR: the building is of four storeys, including an undercroft and Row level, plus attics.
At street level there is a modern shopfront to the undercroft.

The Row has an ornate cast-iron front railing with panels of ornamented circles in squares. A sloping stallboard, measuring 1.82m from front to back, and the Row walkway have their surfaces covered. There are painted-stone cross walls at each end of the stallboard. The Row has a modern shopfront and a panelled plaster ceiling. Painted brackets, probably of stone, carry the bressumer above the Row. This has stop-chamfered arrises comparable with those by James Harrison at 40 Bridge Street and 40 Bridge Street Row West, and 51 Bridge Street and 53 Bridge Street and 59, 59A and 59B Bridge Street Row East.

The third storey has a row of shaped brackets beneath brattishing under a pair of jettied, five-light mullioned casement windows with two transoms. The upper lights incorporate quatrefoil and hollow-lozenge features.
The fourth storey has two ornate canted five-light oriel windows carried on a large moulded base. Each window has ornate sub-panels and corner colonnettes in a C13 manner and there is blank tracery above the upper lights. Between, and to the sides of, the oriels are zig-zag braced panels.

Above each oriel window is a jetty that carries a gabled dormer window to the attic. These have quatrefoil and ornamental cusped panelling beneath a four-light stepped casement window and ogee heads to the side and upper lights. Each gable has spiral-moulded corner colonnettes on carved corbels and deep moulded bargeboards. To the roof is a steep gabled lucarne with one ogee-headed pane. The west end-gable is of brown brick with diaperwork in blue-black and white brick.

INTERIOR: visible features of special interest include architraves and small-paned sash windows to the rear. The east side of the building, inspected from the rear and the fourth storey front gallery of 12 Eastgate Street and Eastgate Row South (which was rebuilt in 1861), shows that 10 Eastgate Street was built before 12 Eastgate Street.

Listing NGR: SJ4055866276

External Links

• Wikidata Q26656841

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

• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)