Houses: Marygate

Marygate (Monuments 241–255)

S.E. side

Only one house remains on this side of the road, all others having been cleared away to expose the precinct wall of St. Mary's Abbey.

(241) House, No. 29, of three storeys, basement and attic, was built in the late 18th century (Plate 95). It stands on a confined site against the wall of St. Mary's Abbey and the back wall, to S.E., probably incorporates parts of the abbey wall and another building of uncertain date.

The entrance doorway (Plate 108) has a timber surround with simple panelled pilasters and console brackets flanking the fanlight and rising to an open pediment over composition garlands in low relief; the pediment being raised clear above the fanlight gives exaggerated height to the design. On the upper floors the front windows to S.W. have been blocked, the S.W. rooms being lit by bay windows in the gable end; above the bays is a semicircular window to the attic.

Many original fittings survive: the staircase has a close string and turned balusters; a fireplace on the first floor has decoration by Thomas Wolstenholme (Plate 115). A grate on the second floor is decorated with figures (Plate 132). On the ground floor at the S.W. end a cupboard has been formed in the doorway of the 14th-century abbey building adjoining.

N.W. side

(242) House, No. 20, built c. 1800, has a narrow frontage. It is of two storeys and the roof is covered with pantiles.

(243) House, No. 22, of two storeys, was possibly built before 1850 but has been much altered. It has a pantiled roof.

(244) House, No. 28, of two storeys with brick walls and pantiled roof, was built in the late 17th century. The plan is L-shaped giving two front rooms on each floor and a back wing containing the chimney with the staircase beside it, and a third room beyond. The entrance, in a modern addition in the re-entrant angle, is now reached by a carriageway opened through one of the ground-floor rooms.

(245) House, No. 30, built in the first half of the 19th century, is of three storeys and attic. It has a bay window of the mid 19th century to the first floor; other windows have segmental arches. Inside, the fittings include a number of cast-iron grates of the early 19th century, some brought from elsewhere and some original to the house (Plate 132).

(246) Houses, Nos. 32, 34, comprise a four-storey L-shaped building of c. 1800 and a two-storey addition of the first half of the 19th century in the re-entrant angle. It is not clear whether the original building formed one house or two. The entrance doorway to No. 34 is flanked by engaged reeded shafts carrying scroll brackets which support an open pediment over the fanlight. The entrance to No. 32 has a simpler door-case with a flat head. The internal fittings are simple; some of the fireplaces retain original iron grates, one signed Carron.

(247) Houses, Nos. 36, 38, built in the early 19th century, are a three-storey pair designed to present a unified three-bay façade to the street. The doorways are grouped in the centre on either side of a third door giving access to the rear and under the central blind windows of the first and second floors. The window openings have low segmental arches. The roof is pantiled.

(248) Nos. 40, 42, comprise a small house of c. 1760 with an early 19th-century extension at the S. end and a substantial back wing of the same date. The original house, of two storeys with cellar and attic, had a symmetrical front and contained, on plan, one room on each side of the entrance hall.

(249) St. Olave's House, No. 48, was built in the late 17th century on a U-shaped plan with unequal wings projecting N.W. In the late 18th century a building was erected behind the shorter wing, separate from the house and apparently not for domestic use, but in the early 19th century it was joined to the house and a chimney and bay windows were added to give one large room on each of two floors. At the same time the space between the original wings was filled in. The street front was rebuilt c. 1900.

The house is of two storeys with attics. Most of the original brick walls are concealed but at the back of the N. wing is an original gable with tumbled brick coping and a projecting band at eaves level. The interior fittings are mostly of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The staircase to the first floor is of the early 19th century; the slender balusters are of square section with beaded angles and hollowed sides. Leading up to the attic is a reset staircase of the late 17th century which is probably the original staircase to the first floor; it has a close string and bulbous turned balusters.

Summerhouse, N.W. of the house, is an octagonal structure of two storeys built in the second quarter of the 19th century. The walls are of ashlar and rubble masonry. The ground floor provides a garden store entered by an arched doorway. The upper floor has three walls fully glazed with marginal panes to each window.

(250) House, No. 50, was built c. 1700; it is of three storeys with a pantiled roof. On plan it comprised two front rooms with an entrance passage between them and a small kitchen, staircase and store-room behind. The front wall was completely rebuilt c. 1905 with added bay windows, and at the back the kitchen has been enlarged. The staircase has original balusters cut out of flat planks to an undulating profile between a close string and a plain handrail. Some original three-panel doors remain on the first floor.

(251) House, Nos. 56, 58, of two storeys and now two tenements, was built c. 1700 on an L-shaped plan and enlarged soon after to give a U-shaped plan. The elevations have been drastically modernised. In No. 58 is a mid 18th-century staircase with alternately turned and twisted balusters.

(252) House, No. 60, formerly the Grey Coat School, was opened as a charity school for girls in 1705. Partial reconstruction and extensive refenestration were carried out at the end of the 19th century and later. Many of the large rooms in the house have been sub-divided in conversion to flats and the N.W. end now forms part of Little Garth (see (254) and (27)).

The building is of three storeys L-shaped on plan, with frontages to Marygate and Marygate Lane (Plate 95). The storeys are marked by projecting brick bands; some original windows remain on the front to Marygate Lane with three-centred arches over two and three casements. Reset over a doorway to Marygate is a fragment of a 17th-century carved bargeboard said to have come from a house in High Ousegate dated 1635.

(253) St. Mary's Cottage, No. 62, is a small dwelling of the second half of the 18th century, facing S.W. In the N.W. gable is an eroded datestone, inscribed 1767 or 1787. The house is of two storeys and on plan originally comprised two rooms flanking a central entrance passage and a staircase behind the N.W. room. The house was refitted in the early 19th century and has absorbed a small part of No. 60 to which it is attached.

Marygate Lane

(254) Almery Garth is a substantial house of c. 1745, standing on part of the garden ground formerly belonging to the Almonry of St. Mary's Abbey, from which it takes its name. A service wing to the S.E., together with some rooms of the adjoining No. 60 Marygate (252), now forms a separate residence known as Little Garth. The building is of three storeys; the walls are of pale brick with red brick dressings and the roofs are tiled. On plan it comprises a long straight range only one room thick, facing S.W. towards the river. The original S.W. elevation of the main block was of five bays with a pilaster at each end and with the central bay projecting slightly and stone bands separating the storeys; the windows had gauged flat arches with key stones. Early in the 19th century the ground floor was enlarged by the addition of a boldly projecting segmental bay and the extension of the hall, a second storey being added to these additions later in the same century. The arrangement of windows in the N.W. bays was also changed and what must have been an imposing symmetrical Georgian front has lost much of its original character.

The front of the service wing, Little Garth, now partly masked by additions, has projecting plat-bands and segmental arches over the windows. The elevation to Marygate Lane is very plain, with 19th-century surrounds to the doorways. The interior fittings are mostly of the early 19th century, including the lower part of the main staircase with open string and turned balusters (Plate 127), but the upper part of the staircase is of c. 1745 and has a close string and turned balusters.

(255) Cottages, range of four, 60 yds. W. of St. Olave's church, includes a small building, not originally domestic, which is probably of early 18th-century date though it does not appear on any map earlier than White's of 1785. The building has been divided into two to form tenements Nos. 1 and 2. Nos. 3 and 4 were built later in the same century and the whole range has been refronted.

The building is of two storeys with brick walls and tiled roof with stone slates at the eaves. The upper floor of Nos. 1 and 2 is carried on slightly chamfered oak beams and oak joists; the rafters are supported by purlins which overlap at the principal rafters to which they are fixed by tusk-tenons. Demolished.