Description

SO8455SE
620-1/12/260

WORCESTER
FORGATE STREET (West side)
No.42

(Formerly listed under FRIAR STREET)

22/05/54

GV II

House, now offices. mid C18 with later additions and alterations. Stucco and pinkish-red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar cornice and copings, plain tile roof, brick end stack with pot.

Four storeys, five first-floor windows. Stucco to ground and first floors, detailing includes horizontal rustication to round floor and tooled architraves. Moulded plinth. Off-centre left entrance a six-panel door in panelled reveals, frieze and fanlight with decorative petal glazing bars, panelled round architrave and tooled impost band, stepped keystone; doorcase has three-quarter engaged Doric columns and open pediment with Apollo mask and sunburst motif. To left a plate glass window with margin lights in plain reveals and with shaped sill. Inserted wide window to right in tooled architrave. First-floor band. First-floor has 6/6 horned sashes in plain reveals and with tooled keystones. Second-floor has 6/6 sashes, some horned, in plain reveals and with sills, flat arches of gauged brick. Third-floor has 3/3 horned sashes in plain reveals and with sills, flat arches. Frieze, cornice and blocking course. Coped eaves.

INTERIOR: retains original joinery and plasterwork, tooled architraves to doors. Openwell staircase behind right room has wreathed handrail and turned balusters.

HISTORICAL NOTE: during the C18 Foregate Street was known as 'the mall' and Tymbs' Worcester Guide notes, 'the Foregate Street itself, by being well paved and sufficiently broad to admit a full circulation of air seems to be generally resorted to as a fashionable promenade.'

The Shire Hall, Statue of Queen Victoria, City Museum and Library and Nos 15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 28, Nos 33-46 (consecutive) and No.40, Foregate Street (qqv) form a good group.

(Worcestershire Historical Society Occasional Papers: Whitehead D: Urban Renewal and Suburban Growth: The Shaping of Georgian Worcester: 1989: 12; Tymbs: Worcester Guide: Worcester: 1802: 60).

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26669244

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

• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide