Description

SO8554NW
620-1/17/431

WORCESTER
MEALCHEAPEN STREET (South side)
Nos.4 and 5

05/04/71

GV
II
Two terraced houses, now shops with offices. c1656 with facade c1765 and later additions and alterations including c1980s ground-floor shop fronts. Purplish-red brick in Flemish bond with rubbed red brick flat arches and stone sills and keystones, timber cornice, plain tile roof with party-wall and right end red brick stack with oversailing course.

EXTERIOR: 3 storeys plus attics to left, 4 first-floor windows (2:2). First and second floors have 6/6 near-flush sashes in plain reveals, with sills, and flat arches with raised keystones throughout. 2 roof dormers with casement windows.Crowning cornice. Ground floor: at left a passage opening; shop fronts in Victorian style have end pilasters with corbel brackets, plate glass windows with slender mullions on panelled aprons and glazed central door, fascia and cornice.

INTERIORS: roof structure said to be c1656, a survival from an earlier house, 4 bays divided by open trusses, each with a collar and ling braces, most rafters in place. Timbers blackened (probably by a fire of 1765 which destroyed No.6 (qv)).

HISTORICAL NOTE: Hughes notes that after the fire of 1765 the front of No.5 was rebuilt. Mealcheapen Street flourished particularly in the C16 and early C17, predominantly as a retail outlet; Hughes: 'it was the proximity to the Cornmarket that gave the street much of its prosperity and led to the establishment of a number of large inns.' One build with No.6 (qv).

All the listed buildings in Mealcheapen Street form a group with the listed buildings in Cornmarket and with Church of St Swithun, Church Street (qqv).

(Hughes P: Buildings and the Building Trade in Worcester 1540-1650: PhD thesis: 1990: 199-200, 207).

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26669420

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

• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)