Survey Data
Reg No
50910039
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural
Previous Name
Stephen Street News/The People’s Café
Original Use
House
Historical Use
Shop/retail outlet
In Use As
Apartment/flat (converted)
Date
1730 - 1920
Coordinates
315698, 233706
Date Recorded
16/10/2015
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay three-storey former house, built c. 1750, refaced and having replacement shopfront and recessed attic storey inserted. Now in residential use, with vacant commercial unit on ground floor. Gambrel roof, with set-back attic storey and stepped buff brick chimneystack with replacement clay pots to west party wall, concealed behind brick parapet with masonry coping. Machine-made red brick walling of c. 1910, laid in English garden wall bond. Square-headed window openings with concrete sills and brick voussoirs to first floor only; second floor window openings reconfigured. Replacement uPVC windows. Forms part of group of similarly styled and dated buildings.
Appraisal
No. 39 is thought to have mid-eighteenth-century origins, evident from the stepped chimneystack to the centre of the western party wall but it is unclear if any corner fireplaces survive internally. Refaced in the early twentieth century and a modern shopfront inserted across ground floor, the original character has been further eroded in recent decades with the insertion of a gambrel roof with attic storey and replacement uPVC windows. Despite these changes, the building retains the Georgian domestic plot size, massing and chimneystack, and as part of a stretch of similarly dated buildings, it continues to make a positive contribution to the varied character of this historic streetscape.