Summary

Shop with accommodation over, now mixed use, built in 1895 to a design by Major Charles Davis in an eclectic C17 style, curved to the corner between Cheap Street and High Street, altered in the C20.

Description

MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar with a Welsh slate roof.

PLAN: An enclosed site, single-depth plan with windows only to front except to the upper floors.

EXTERIOR: Three storeys, three bays. Ground floor has original shop-fronts with central entrance and flanking display windows, and small square panes in fascia above. Bays separated by blocked pilasters which support continuous cornice. First floor each bay has large segmental headed window with continuous drip-mould and keyed head. Windows are five light with mullions and transom, centre light is wider with higher transom. Between each window an arched panel supports a narrow giant pilaster. Plain wider pilasters at either end of front. Sill band to second floor, outer bays have single light window flanking two-light one, centre bay has five-light window, all with transom and raised architraves. Each window below transom is plain sash. Third floor has paired plain sashes with central mullion, each pair has apron with raised surround below. Dentil cornice, parapet, mansard roof with four flat topped dormers with two/two sashes. Roof line altered from original gables, as shown in a photograph in the Bath Graphic, May, 1896.

INTERIORS: Not inspected.

History

This late-Victorian commission was from WH Smith, a luggage and trunk manufacturer, whose initials survive on the building. It was widened and re-fronted under Baldwin’s direction in c1790.

Reasons for Listing

* Architectural interest: despite some later alteration, this is a well-proportioned late-C19 building in an eclectic C17 style;
* Group Value: it forms an important part of the design of a group of buildings which lie on a significant street within the conservation area and world heritage site of the City of Bath.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26675805

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

• 
  For the Record
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6