Crypt Chambers (or Crypt Building) is at 28–34 Eastgate Street and 34–40 Eastgate Row, Chester, Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

as a designated Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

and incorporates a section of the

Chester Rows Chester Rows are a set of structures in each of the four main streets of Chester, in the United Kingdom, consisting of a series of covered walkways on the first floor behind which are entrances to shops and other premises. At street level is ...

History

Crypt Chambers is built on the site of a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

house whose

undercroft An undercroft is traditionally a cellar or storage room, often brick-lined and vaulted, and used for storage in buildings since medieval times. In modern usage, an undercroft is generally a ground (street-level) area which is relatively open ...

is still present. The present building was constructed in 1858 to a design by T. M. Penson. It was built as a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

for William and Charles Brown of the

Browns of Chester Browns was a department store in Chester established in 1780 by Susannah Brown. The store traded from its site on Chester's Eastgate Street from 1791 until 2021. Once regarded as the "Harrods of the North", the building interior contains many orn ...

family of

draper Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. History Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...

Architecture

Exterior

The building is in four storeys plus attics. It is constructed in red and yellow

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

with a roof of brown tiles. The

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loan word from the French (), which means ' frontage' or ' face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect ...

is asymmetrical, having a square stair turret, with three bays to the east and one wider bay to the west. At the street level five steps at the base of the tower lead down to the undercroft and in the middle east bay eight steps lead up to the Row level. Between these are shop fronts. At the Row level are

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...

railings behind which are stallboards and above them are moulded arches. On the front of the tower at this level is a blank scroll, on the east face is a recessed panel containing the initials W. B. (for William Brown), on the west face the initials are C. B. (for Charles Brown) and on the rear face is a scroll inscribed AD 1858: CRYPT CHAMBERS. On each side of the entrance to the shop are the Chester City arms. In each of the third and fourth storeys of the east bays are three pairs of arched, two-light windows with slender columns between each pair. In the west bay are four two-light arched windows in each storey. At this level on the tower is a two-storey oriel window. Above these storeys, the central eastern bay has a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

containing a traceried window in a rounded triangle, on each side of which are three-light dormer windows. The west bay also has a gable; this contains a small triangular oriel. The tower has a four-light window between shallow

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral ( ...

es. The top of the tower consists of a truncated

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires a ...

with a gabled dormer on each face. At its summit is a cast iron rail.

Interior

The undercroft consists of four bays with chamfered rib-vaulting; the

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

is "of high quality". The architectural historian

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

considered its undercroft to be "one of the best medieval crypts of Chester". Much of the structure above the undercroft has been changed or covered by modern materials.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Commercial buildings completed in 1858 Grade I listed buildings in Chester Medieval architecture Department stores of the United Kingdom Gothic Revival architecture in Cheshire Thomas Mainwaring Penson buildings

History

Architecture

Exterior

Interior

See also

References