Golden Square Area: Brewer Street

Brewer Street

All of the ground on the north side of Brewer Street between Bridle Lane and Warwick Street formed part of Gelding Close. In 1684 Martha Axtell granted fifty-one-year leases of most of the ground between Bridle Lane and Lower John Street to John Taylor, John James, Abraham Bridle, William Partridge, William Dormer and John Niblett. (fn. 1)

At the partition of 1675 the ground between Lower John Street and Warwick Street was taken by Isaac Symball. Building there was probably under the long lease which the latter granted to John Wells, gentleman (fn. 2) (see page 165).

No. 54 Brewer Street

Formerly No. 10

No. 54 is a stuccoed building of three storeys, perhaps incorporating part of the original late seventeenth-century house. The Brewer Street front has in the ground storey an altered shopfront of mid nineteenth-century date, and in the second storey three flat-headed windows. Above these is a bandcourse, possibly of brick beneath the stucco, and in the third storey a single wide window. The interior has been completely altered.

No. 62 Brewer Street

Demolished

This well-designed house at the east corner of Lower James Street had a handsome shop-front (Plate 137a) and was probably of mid eighteenthcentury date. The shop-front towards Brewer Street was divided into three bays, narrow between wide, by Doric plain-shafted columns. The middle columns had pilaster responds flanking the plain elliptical-arched doorway to the shop. Each side bay contained a shop window, above a stallboard grating formed of vertical iron bars twisted into wavy profiles. The entablature, which had a plain frieze and a dentilled cornice, was carried across each side bay window and broken forwards over each column, but in the middle bay the architrave and frieze were omitted, while the cornice was carried across to form an open triangular pediment-hood to the doorway. The house front had been stuccoed to represent stone, but the original form had been preserved. There were three storeys, each with three windows in plain openings, the middle one wider than the others. A bold sill-band underlined the first-floor windows, the middle one being accented by a round-arched head. There was a simply moulded entablature below the windows in the attic storey, which was finished with an open triangular pediment. Breaks in the surface divided the wide return front into three parts, the slightly projecting centre containing a trio of windows in each storey, round-arched on the first floor, rectangular on the second, and framed by a semi-circular arch in the attic. Either side face had two windows in each storey, but many of these windows were, in fact, blind.

Nos. 80– 82 (even) Brewer Street

Formerly Nos. 21–22 (consec.)

These two houses appear to have been built together, probably shortly before 1700. They share a front and each contains a cellar, three storeys, and a mansard garret. No. 80, however, has the wider part of the frontage, with three windows in each storey, but the shallow site allows only one room on each floor, reached by a cramped staircase in a compartment that projects partly into the room and partly from the back wall. The stair, which has moulded closed strings, simply turned balusters, Doric column newels, and a slender moulded handrail, is complete from the first floor to the garret. Apart from some box-cornices and fragments of plain rebated panelling, there is nothing else of interest within the house. No. 82, with a two-windows-wide front, has a conventional plan, with the dog-legged staircase on the west side of the back room. This staircase is complete above the first-floor level, and some ovolo-moulded panelling survives in the first-floor rooms. The ground storey of the front has been replaced by shop-fronts, but No. 80 has its original six-panelled front door. The upper part of the front is very plain, in stock bricks with red dressings to the flat-arched window openings which contain flush frames with later sashes.