| Description | 162 to 164 Kirkgate, Wakefield.
162 to 164 Kirkgate was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1979 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey. The photographic images and sketch plan/drawings produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS (Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1979). The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a brick house of the mid 18th century, with 19th century additions. It is of three storeys, has a hipped roof, and is double pile on plan. The house was a single rectangle, six bays longs. There are no signs now of buildings at the rear.
Owing to the obliteration of original detail on the conversion to shop use, only one point can be established about the ground floor plan. This is the position of a staircase in the south east angle, betrayed by the existence of a long stair window in the rear wall. Whether this stair was the principal stair, or a service stair, cannot be determined, although there are suggestions that this must have been a service stair (see below). The main stair is housed today in a projecting turret at the rear, but the brickwork of the turret shows this change to be of 19th century date.
The first floor allows more to be said, although this too has been opened up for shop use. The front of the house is six bays and is divided into four rooms, two of a single bay each and two of two bays each. This is shown by the survival of cornices. At the north east angle there was a heated two bay room with an original cornice (see sketch [on accompanying plan]). A single bay room lay to the south, decorated with a cornice (see sketch [on accompanying plan]) only in the western third of the room. This is an original arrangement, for the cornice is finished neatly, and it suggests that this bay had a special use, possibly accommodating a stair, although how this was contrived in this bay without blocking the window is difficult to deduce.
The next room to the south is of two bays, heated by a stack on its south wall: again the cornice is original, and is very similar to that in the single bay room. To the south of this room is another single bay room, this time featureless, although it is heated.
The rear of the house preserves less of the original arrangement. A cornice defines a single bay room at the south west angle, where the early stair was sited. The rest of the rear is beyond recovery, for all the walls have been removed and the cornices survive only intermittently. All that can be said is that the rear provided at least one heated room, and possibly was arranged in much the same fashion as the front of the house. What is unusual is that, if the stair was sited in the south west corner, there appears to be no provision of a corridor connecting it with the main rooms on the first floor. This suggests that perhaps there was indeed another stair in the off centre single bay on the front. This might have served main rooms, with the other stair for service use.
The top floor of the house contains no decorative features, implying that this area was restricted to service use. The existence of the cornice all round the south western room on the first floor shows that the stair in this bay did not rise to second floor level: access must have been by means of another flight. The plain nature of the upper floor implies that the first floor rooms were used as the main bedrooms, and that, in turn, the ground floor contained the main reception rooms rather than a shop or trade rooms. There is no sign of a kitchen: a cellar of unknown dimensions has been blocked off, making it impossible to determine whether a kitchen was located here. The kitchen was possibly on the ground floor or in a now removed block at the rear. There is no means of locating the position of the main door.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1979. '(Fielding’s Furnishings). House in Kirkgate (Nos. 160 164?), Wakefield'). |