| Description | 155 159 Westgate, Wakefield. Former prestigious early to mid 18th century cloth merchant's house
'C18 range of 3 storeys, seven windows. Fainted brick with 2nd floor band. Hipped roof of stone slates with off centre ridge stack. Flat gauged brick arches and stone cills to replaced sash windows on let floor (in flush wood architraves) and to modern casements above. Ground floor altered: centre bay rebuilt in different brick and flanking shop windows inserted. Formerly the residence of Jeremiah Naylor, a prominent clothier'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 06/12/1973. Date amended 01/02/1979. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1259117. Web site accessed 11/12/2013).
No.155 was the subject of an archaeological assessment in 1977 by Colum Giles as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey. The photographic images and sketches produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS (Giles, C. 1977). The Fieldwork report is summarised below:
Large brick house of the early to mid 18th century modified in the 19th century. The original details of the plan, decoration and room use have been destroyed due to conversion to a shop. The house is of three storeys and is double pile on plan. It has a hipped stone roof, pierced by an off centre stack. The house is not rectangular, its corner siting giving it an awkward angle on the west side. The windows, although not original, are flush with the wall, a feature which suggests an early date of insertion. The current two front doors may also be 19th century inserts. It is possible that the house originally had a single front door lost during the refitting.
A central entry would have given the original house a symmetrical facade, the doorway leading into an entrance hall which gave access to the present off centre stair hall at the rear. That this stair is original can be demonstrated as it has early to mid 18th century characteristics; an open string with carved cheeks, turned balusters and a moulded swept handrail. Large heated rooms probably flanked the entrance hall, the south east reception room was later reused as a kitchen. The south west area of the main block contained pantry and scullery in 1875 [with reference to a plan accompanying the archive: Anon. 1875] and may have always been a service area. The kitchens of the original house were possibly in the rear range. The first floor has three rooms on the north front; at the west end is a three bay room with an original cornice, with the rest of the front being divided into two smaller rooms.
The 19th century subdivision gave two simple dwellings, the eastern one with two rooms (kitchen and dining room), passage and stair in 1875. The western dwelling provided similar accommodation.
The early 19th century seems to have marked the decline of the status of the house with the subdivision of what had been an imposing 'mansion'. Further decline had taken place by 1875, for by then one of the dwellings had become a shop, perhaps serving the mill at the rear.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1977. 'Wakefield. No. 155 Westgate').
There is a little confusion of the house numbering. English Heritage describes the seven windowed range as being no.159 while Giles surveys no.155. Nos.155 159, depicted in Giles' photographs, appear to be a contiguous block of seven bays under a single a hipped roof. |