Survey Data

Reg No

50010381


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

House


Historical Use

Laundry


Date

1915 - 1925


Coordinates

315860, 234483


Date Recorded

12/10/2011


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Terraced single-bay four-storey brick and limestone commercial building, reconstructed c.1920, having shopfront, c.1960, inserted to ground floor. Recently damaged by fire. Flat roof with red brick chimneystack, hidden behind raised parapet wall with moulded granite coping. Red brick walls laid in Flemish bond with chamfered piers of brick and Portland limestone banding rising from first to third floors surmounted by Portland limestone panelled console brackets framing dentillated stone cornice spanning façade. Tripartite square-headed window opening to third floor with Portland limestone architrave surround, continuous sill and panelled mullions. Three-sided canted timber oriel window to first and second floors with central pediment to each level, continuous timber cornice, extended in Portland limestone to façade and roughcast rendered below first floor sill. Replacement shopfront with replacement fascia (possibly vitreolite) and original cornice over flanked by Portland limestone panelled brackets to base of banded piers.

Appraisal

This building is one of six similar buildings employing decorative elements such as full-width glazing with stone embellishments and the maintaining the same-height parapet height with its neighbours. Built to replace a former house destroyed during the 1916 Rising, the building respects the plot ratio of the former structure. Recently fire damaged with plans to retain the façade only, this decorative façade is of considerable artistic importance in the context of the twentieth-century with its chrome-bordered vitreolite red letters on a deep white fascia. The building as a whole adds to a small collection of similarly detailed commercial buildings lining the south side of Abbey Street Middle.