York Historic Environment Record

House, behind Nos. 75, 77, of two storeys and attic, is a four-bay unjettied timber-framed structure of 16th-century date, with its main elevation facing S.W. towards Swinegate. The S.E. bay of the house is now incorporated in an adjoining building and is inaccessible.

The ground-floor layout is now lost, but on the first floor the house had a two-bay living-room at the N.W. end, lit by two oriel windows in the S.W. wall. There were two further rooms to the S.E., that next to the living-room, probably a parlour, having a large opening in the S.W. wall which was probably constructed to house a shop-made window. The attic was unlit, and access to both this and the first floor was probably by an internal stair.

In the 17th century extensive modernisation took place. The S.E. bay of the living-room was half-filled with a brick chimney-breast, and its oriel window blocked. The chimneybreast heated both the surviving N.W. bay of the living-room and, on its S.E. side, a new room created by the removal of the stud wall between the living-room and the parlour. At the same time a new external timber-framed staircase annex was built against the middle two bays on the N.E. side, the stair leading up to a doorway cut in the wall of the chimneybreast bay. This staircase was carried up to the attic where the two end bays were given transverse gables to provide lighting. In either the 17th or 18th century the N.E. and S.E. stud walls to the parlour were removed and replaced by unpegged widely-spaced studding. The house was restored in 1975.

The original framing is of a type not common in York, the studs being 7–8 in. wide and the same distance apart. They are grooved on the vertical faces as a key for the mortar, and the infill was of brick cut down to fit the required width. The roof contained five kerb-principal trusses carried on flat tie-beams, with two purlins each side.

Monument 363. Citation: 'Houses: Petergate', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in City of York, Volume 5, Central (London, 1981), pp. 180-199


NMR Information

BF061041 HOUSE LOW PETERGATE, YORK File of material relating to a site or building. This material has not yet been fully catalogued.

NMR, NMR data (Unassigned). SYO2214.

RCHME, 1981, City of York Volume V: The Central Area (Monograph). SYO65.