36-44 Long Row and 2-20 Market Street, Nottingham (former Debenhams buildings), Nottingham, City of Nottingham

Summary

A department store on the corner of Long Row and Market Street of 1927-1928 by Bromley and Watkins incorporating: buildings on Long Row by William Dymock Pratt of 1893-1896, a late 1950s infill building fronting Long Row, a late-1950s re-fronting of a Café building with mid-Victorian origins on Long Row, buildings on Market Street by T.C. Hine and Son of around 1872 to 1887, further buildings on Market Street dating to around 1960, and diverse service buildings behind the frontages and facing Norfolk Place.

Description

A department store incorporating a range of buildings including works of 1927-1928 by Bromley and Watkins, T.C. Hine and Son of 1872-1887, William Dymock Pratt of 1893-1896, further buildings from around 1960 and various service buildings.

MATERIALS: 2-10 Market Street has stone walls under a slate roof, 12-20 Market Street has brick walls with a slate roof to its front, then a flat roof behind, 40-44 Long Row is clad in Portland stone with a slate roof, 36 and 39 Long Row are moulded stone, and 37-38 Long Row is in brick with stone details under a slate roof. Various infill buildings have a mixture of slate and flat roofs. The ground floor shopfronts are stone and metal.

PLAN: the complex of buildings presents elevations to Long Row in the south and Market Street to the west. The eastern boundary of the properties is Norfolk Place, the narrow alley which separates 36 and 35 Long Row at ground floor level and runs north from Old Market Square to Upper Parliament Street. The south walls of 22 and 26 Market Street and 7 Norfolk Place mark the northern limit of the former Debenhams buildings and enclose a yard outside the store’s rear goods entrance at the north-east corner of the complex. There are a variety of flat-roofed infill buildings extending back from the frontages to Market Street and Long Row, some of which present an east facing elevation to Norfolk Place.

EXTERIOR:

40-44 LONG ROW

This is the main building of the department store on the corner of Long Row with Market Street. The principal elevation faces south to Long Row, and side elevation west to Market Street. It is clad in Portland stone ashlar with fine joints and is five stories plus an attic in a slate-covered mansard roof. The mansard roof encloses a flat roof within its angle. Windows are generally six-over-six sashes with no surrounds.

40-44 LONG ROW: LONG ROW ELEVATION

The ground floor is recessed from the line of the upper floors and is supported by six square columns forming an arcade allowing pedestrian access. The columns have their lower halves clad in polished stone and have Doric capitals. A plain stone frieze and cornice is supported by the columns, with a smaller metal cornice fitted beneath the stone one. Behind the columns is a glazed shopfront set within metal mullions, with the glazing curving in to a wide, four-door central entrance.

Above the ground floor, the front elevation is of thirteen bays, arranged 3:7:3. The central section of seven bays is flanked by eastern and western pavilions of three bays each which are demarcated by full-height rusticated pilasters. The capitals of the pilasters are level with the tops of the third-floor windows and are decorated with a band of egg and dart moulding. The third-floor windows have the spaces between their heads decorated with a cornice.

Windows on the first floor of the central section all have simply moulded architraves under a projecting cornice. The most ornate window is that at first floor level in the central bay of the central section; it has a curved iron balcony and is framed by engaged Ionic columns supporting a triangular pediment topped with a cartouche flanked by two cherubs. The windows in the central bays on the first-floor of the pavilions have segmental pediments broken by a cartouche on corbels over a moulded architrave; they also have curved iron balconies. The second-floor central windows in the pavilions are also decorated with a wide cornice supported by corbels. A plain frieze is above the third-floor windows, with a pronounced modillion cornice above.

The fourth floor continues the three sections of the floors below, with the pavilions each having a tripartite window of a three-over-six window divided from side lights by Tuscan columns. The central section is a loggia of seven bays divided by pairs of Ionic columns with low iron railings spanning the spaces between pairs of pillars. A cornice and blank frieze complete this storey.

The fifth, attic, floor is behind a stone parapet which raises at the pavilion ends with a coffered panel flanked by scrolls then urns. The central section has seven dormer windows centred over, but smaller than, those in the floors below. The pavilions each have a centrally located window.

To the Market row elevation, above the shopfront, the southern section of the building is the same as the west pavilion of the Long Row elevation but is narrower in width. The windows either side of the central bay are reduced to tall, narrow, four-over-four light sashes and the central first floor window has lost the cartouche of the corresponding window on the Long Row side.

The northern section of the Market Street elevation has windows in each of the four bays in the first, second and third floors. The third-floor windows have no surround, but those on the second floor have the same detailing as the central second floor windows of the pavilions of the Long Row elevation, but with the architrave extending down to enclose the base of the first-floor windows. The large modillion cornice continues from Long Row, dividing the third and fourth floors.

36 AND 39 LONG ROW

These are two late-1950s flat roofed buildings flanking 37-38 Long Row; the four-storey number 36 to the right, and five storey 39 to the left. All three buildings share a shopfront which is recessed from the building line and supported by rectangular columns. The upper floors are enclosed in moulded stone frames divided by full length vertical mullions supporting tall windows. The horizontal floor divisions are marked by panels decorated with small square mosaic tiles within the mullions. These frontages are of lesser interest.

37-38 LONG ROW

A four-story building under a hipped roof of two sections divided by a narrow flat valley. It is asymmetrical reflecting that the building was built in two stages, this is most visible through the mismatching of decorative carvings between its eastern and western halves.

The ground floor is the central section of the late-1950s glazed shopfront shared with 36 and 39 Long Row. Above this, the building is divided into four bays by brick pilasters which spring from stone corbels at the windows’ transom level where the first-floor transitions from stone to Flemish bond brick. The third of the four bays from west to east projects to form a three-storey oriel window, and the fourth bay is wider than the others. Generally windows are one-over-one square headed sashes in stone surrounds with transom lights.

The first-floor windows are under polychromatic brick and stone segmental arches with decorated keystones. Above the arches is a relief-carved acanthus leaf frieze which is continuous across the façade at this level. Over this frieze each bay has a carved panel: those in the two western bays are decorated with foliage and cherubs, the one in the oriel bay has scrolling foliage, and the eastern bay’s has foliage and a central Green Man. A cornice over the panels divides them from the second-floor windows.

The second and third floor windows are in plainer stone surrounds, with carved panels between the second and third floors. Above these a parapet tops the building, finished with stone coping. Stone urns top the pilasters at either end of the building. The area over the oriel bay extends upwards into the gable of a small pitched roof which runs north to meet the eastern half of the roof.

2-4 MARKET STREET

This is a building of four narrow bays comprising of: ground floor shopfront, three floors above in rock faced stone laid in regular courses, then an attic storey in a pitched slate roof. Ground floor openings are framed in a plain painted metal surround set below a blank stone frieze with cornice above. The first and second floor windows are round headed sashes under triangular pediments in architraves which are lugged at the top and flare out at their bases. A stone string course separates first and second floors. The third-floor windows are smaller, square headed two-over-two light sashes in lugged architraves. There is a plain band of stone under the eaves of the roof with dormer windows above.

6-10 MARKET STREET

This five-bay building is of similar design and materials to numbers 2-4 immediately to the south on Market Street. Of the five bays, the central, northern and southern ones have oriel windows on the first and second floors, and the other two bays have the same round-headed sash windows in lugged architraves as at 2-4 Market Street. There are stone string courses level with the bottoms of the first, second and third floor windows. The third-floor windows are round-headed two-over-two sashes in ashlar surrounds with those in the end and central bays flanked by one-over-one sashes divided by Ionic columns. A course of plain ashlar runs horizontally at the level of the tops of the third-floor windows. There are five round headed two-over-two sash dormer windows in stone architraves in the west slope of the roof.

12-20 MARKET STREET

12-20 Market Street dates to around 1960 and is of lesser interest than the other Market Street buildings. It is a five-storey building of seven bays built in red brick in Flemish bond with Portland stone dressings. The ground floor is a shopfront, upper windows are 6-over-6 sashes with the central window on the first floor distinguished from the others by a horizontal cornice supported on console brackets. Plain stone cornices separate the ground from first and second from third floors. The building is covered by a flat roof which has a slope to its west, Market Street, side imitating a mansard roof.

NORFOLK PLACE ELEVATIONS

On Norfolk Place, accessed by an alleyway immediately north of the east elevation of 36 Long Row, are the functional side elevations of 36 Long Row and the infill buildings behind it. Halfway up the alley the former 1910 side entrance to the ‘L’ plan Mikado Café is visible. This is a curved brick bay set back from the line of the street at ground floor level immediately south of an early-C18 style stone doorway with a thick, banded architrave with large keystones over a triangular pediment.

INTERIOR: the individual buildings comprising the store have different numbers of floors, but the public shop-floor areas which span between the buildings are spread over five levels; lower ground floor, ground floor, then first, second and third floors. Staff welfare facilities, training and office areas are on upper floors, while stock and service areas are on lower and basement levels. At below ground-floor level is a coal store carved into the sandstone bedrock. Frequent renovations and adaptions have left the shop-floor areas as a series of open spaces with late-C20 fittings and fixtures, suspended ceilings and dry lining to walls. The open shop-floors themselves have multiple levels, often linked by short staircases.

There are two larger staircases of particular interest, both were in place by 1927. One stair spans the join between 44 Long Row and 2-4 Market Street and is in the south-west corner of the building; the other is centrally located, west of the Norfolk Place bay to the former Mikado Café. The south-western staircase runs from basement to top floor (fifth floor of 40-44 Long Row); the central stair runs from ground floor to top floor (third floor at this part of the building). Both have closed strings, square newels, flat handrails, turned balusters, and both make their various turns at right angles. The south-western staircase has coffered plaster panels beneath the flights, and Ionic columns supporting moulded friezes at some of its landings. The central staircase is irregular in the lengths of its flights and landings between turns and has coffered panels to the walls of the stairwell.

There are occasional details surviving from earlier phases of the buildings such as doorcases, plaster detailing to ceiling beams and simple octagonal columns. Particularly richly moulded ceiling beams and cornices survive in the round bay of the former Mikado café on the Norfolk Place side of the building.

History

By the beginning of the second half of the C19 the large department store, a shop which sold a wide variety of goods displayed in themed areas over several open floors, had become an established feature in larger English towns. Nottingham was served by several such stores in the later-C19, with Griffin and Spalding being one of the city’s best known. Griffin and Spalding was formed in 1878 when Dickinson’s drapery shop on Long Row was purchased by William Griffin (d 1932) and John Spalding (d 1924). The widening of Sheep Street in 1865 to create Market Street had resulted in Dickinson’s shop occupying a more prominent corner plot on the north side of Old Market Square, and the shop was rebuilt by Griffin and Spalding in the late 1880s to take full advantage of its new position. The 1880s shop was enlarged in 1912, and the current main department store building at 40-44 Long Row which replaced it was completed in two stages between 1920 and 1927 by the local firm of Bromley and Watkins.

After the acquisition of Dickinson’s by Griffin and Spalding, the business expanded absorbing adjoining properties to the north on Market Street and east on Long Row. Between 1872 and 1877 2 to 10 Market Street had been constructed as five individual shops by one of Nottingham’s most well respected architectural firms, T C Hine and Son. Numbers 2 to 6 were occupied by Griffin and Spalding as soon as 1897 when they had new shopfronts installed. Numbers 12-20 were likely also to date to soon after the creation of Market Street and be near contemporary with numbers 2 to 10, though these were replaced with the present brick fronted building around 1960.

On Long Row, the Mikado Café at number 39 was acquired by Griffin and Spalding in the mid-1930s. It was kept as a separate concern for some time, but in the late 1950s it was re-fronted and fully incorporated into the department store which around this time also acquired and absorbed 36 and 37-38 Long Row on the other side of the café. The café was originally a building of around 1870, extended to an ‘L’ shaped building in 1910 when the plot north of 36 Long Row was purchased by the then owners, providing an entrance to Norfolk Place. It was further remodelled in 1927. 37-38 Long Row are a retail building by another of Nottingham’s best Victorian architects, William Dymock Pratt (1854-1916). Like the main store building it was built in two stages (of 1892 and 1903) and it infilled a former alleyway, Cauldron Place. Number 36 was a new build in the late 1950s, contemporary with the re-fronting of number 39.

The Debenhams chain of department stores had its origins in the late-C18 as a cloth and textile shop in London owned by a Thomas Clark. The name came from William Debenham (1794-1863) who joined Clark in partnership in 1813. In the 1920s, Debenhams began to expand widely, and in 1944 they acquired a controlling interest in the by then well-established Griffin and Spalding in Nottingham. Griffin and Spalding kept this name until 1973 when they adopted ‘Debenhams’. The store underwent significant refurbishments in 1951, 1988 and 1998.

Debenhams ceased trading in its physical stores in May 2021, and the buildings that formed the Nottingham store became vacant at this time.

Reasons for Listing

36-44 Long Row and 2-20 Market Street, Nottingham (former Debenhams buildings), a department store incorporating a range of buildings including: works of 1927-8 by Bromley and Watkins, T C Hine and Son of 1872-1887, William Dymock Pratt of 1893-1896, further buildings from around 1960 and various service buildings, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* the Classical detailing and Portland stone materials of 40-44 Long Row applied to the prominent corner building produced a grand shop which references contemporary development in London’s Regent Street;
* in combination with the Council House and Old Market Square, 40-44 Long Row defines the townscape character of the civic and commercial centre of Nottingham;
* there is further architectural interest in the façades of the T C Hine and Son and Dymock Pratt buildings which are late-C19 commercial properties of good interest. All the façades survive with little alteration;
* the interior of the store retains features of interest including staircases, mouldings and columns, with the potential for more features to be preserved behind late-C20 insertions.

Historic interest:

* the range of different building styles making up the department store illustrate its growth through accretion from origins as a single shop; this is typical of the evolution of department stores in the C19 and C20, but it is rare for this process to be preserved visually;
* Griffin and Spalding and the Mikado Café were well-known, long-standing institutions in the city of Nottingham which contributed to the vibrancy of the city as a provincial and regional destination for shopping and socialising.

Group value:

* the corner building at 40-44 Long Row has very strong group value with the Council House, and all the buildings share strong group value with the other listed commercial buildings around Old Market Square.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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