York Historic Environment Record

YORK SE6051NW CLIFFORD STREET 1112-1/28/174 (West side) 28/02/86 Nos.2-10 (Even) Clifford Chambers (No.4) (Formerly Listed as: CLIFFORD STREET No.8 SS Empire) GV II Range of shops and offices, and including entrance and foyer to former music hall, now Grand Opera House (qv). c1900; shopfront to No.10 altered c1920. No.8, former music hall entrance and foyer, remodelled 1989. MATERIALS: orange-red brick in English garden wall bond with shopfronts of sandstone ashlar; brick pilasters, banded with ashlar on ground floor; ground floor and eaves cornices of moulded sandstone with terracotta corbel table to eaves; brick parapet with moulded stone coping; other dressings of sandstone ashlar and terracotta; slate roof. EXTERIOR: 3-storey front of 5 unequal bays, with curved corner bays at each end. Front articulated by giant pilasters carrying eaves cornice over moulded corbel table, surmounted by pierced parapet breaking forward over pilasters as panelled pedestals. Moulded ground floor cornice; pilasters broken at ground floor level by gabled capitals, containing relief carved floral and foliate motifs. Entrance to Clifford Chambers (No.4) approached by steps within round arch on short side shafts with foliate capitals. Arch has ballflower mouldings in sunk roundels to archivolt, moulded foliage trails to soffit and hood of stylised beakhead and pellet mouldings. Above arch, frieze panel contains the name 'Clifford Chambers' carved in low relief. Arch closed by wrought-iron double gates in front of panelled door in glazed and panelled screen. Entrance to No.8 is segment-arched and contains arched doorcase on squat shafts, detailed as for No.4. Recessed paired double doors, beneath small-pane overlight, are half glazed and panelled, with renewed glazing and curvilinear glazing bars. Shopfronts framed in moulded shouldered arches on squat shafts, raised on high pedestals, with moulded bases, annulets and carved capitals. Arch spandrels, beneath plain fascia, contain sunk roundels relief with floral or foliar motifs carved in relief. Plate glass shop windows with moulded stone sills, contained in fluted colonnettes with leaf and Ionic capitals. Original glazed and panelled shop doors in shouldered arched openings survive in corner entrance bay to No.2, and to No.6; door and windows to No.10 altered. First floor windows are round-headed 1-pane sashes, either single, paired or tripled, with stone sills on moulded brackets; set back in gauged brick arches on short shafts like those on ground floor, beneath continuous hoodmould. Flat-headed sashes on second floor, with moulded lintels and sills on moulded brackets. Right and left returns to King Street and Cumberland Streets repeat detail of main front. INTERIOR: staircase to Clifford Chambers is open string, has turned bobbin balusters, two to a tread, with broad moulded handrail and turned grooved newels with carved ball finials. Nos 2-6 and No.10 are new additions to the list. Listing NGR: SE6034051616