Description

811/3/178 NORTHGATE STREET
10-JAN-53 (East side)
2

GV II
No.2 Northgate Street is a two-storey, five-bay house dating from the late C17 with alterations to the main elevation in the last quarter of the C18. The building is double-depth on plan, with a projecting rear wing to the north. The house is built from red brick, with a painted stucco main elevation.

EXTERIOR: The main elevation is set on a slightly projecting plinth; there are rusticated quoins to the southern end, with a plain pilaster to the north at the junction with number 4. There is a central entrance doorway with a six-panel raised and fielded door, in an opening with a rectangular fanlight, moulded architrave and entablature with pulvinated frieze. The windows are six-over-six sashes, set in reveals, with slightly projecting keystones. The roof is hipped and has two gabled dormers set with side-hung timber casement windows, all covered in Welsh slate. The side and rear elevations are of brick and retain their C17 mullioned and transomed windows with timber casements, and a string course between the ground and first floors which originally extended along the main elevation.

INTERIOR: There is a C18 staircase set centrally, and a panelled room to the first floor of the same date.

The house has group value with the other buildings along both the east and west sides of Northgate Street.

HISTORY: The centre of Warwick was radically altered by a fire on 5 September 1694; this began in the area to the west of Northgate Street, but spread to the area after householders moved valuable furniture, already smouldering, to St Mary's Church, set at the south end of Northgate Street. The church itself caught fire and then the flames rapidly spread along Northgate Street, destroying all the houses on the east side, and damaging those to the west. Some walls towards the rear of the houses on the east side appear to have survived the fire. The houses were rebuilt in the period immediately following the fire, before the end of the C17, though with some alterations later in the C18, including much of the detailing to their main elevations. The houses were evidently substantial private dwellings, but by 1896, trade directories show that several were in commercial or professional use, and some in use as lodgings, though a number were still private family homes. By this date, number 16 was an office for Warwickshire County Council, and in the early C21, the houses were all in use as offices for the departments of the district council, together with the later C20 offices built to the rear of the Northgate Street houses.

SOURCES: Victoria County History: A History of the County of Warwick : Volume 8: The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick (1969) 427-34
Nikolaus Pevsner and Alexandra Wedgwood: The Buildings of England: Warwickshire (2003) 461
Fire records at Warwickshire County Record Office

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION:
2 Northgate Street is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* A largely intact house of some architectural pretension dating substantially from the late C17
* The later C18 alterations to the main elevation are of good quality and enhance the building's special architectural interest
* Group value with the adjacent listed buildings at 4-22 Northgate Street, Northgate House and the listed buildings to the west side of Northgate Street

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26286973

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

• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990