J. McNeill

Terraced two-bay four-storey house, built c.1800, with timber shopfront of c.1860 to ground floor. Hipped slate roof, set perpendicular to street, with rendered chimneystack to south party wall having clay pots. Roof hidden behind brick parapet wall with masonry coping and cast-iron hopper and downpipe breaking through to north end. Brown brick walls laid in Flemish bond with iron sign on iron bracket to first floor. Rendered wall to south side elevation. Gauged brick flat-arch window openings with flush rendered reveals, granite sills and replacement single-pane timber sliding sash windows. First floor windows have coloured leaded margin lights. Traditional timber shopfront to ground floor comprising flat-panelled timber pilasters on plinth bases with scrolled console brackets supporting timber fascia and lead-lined cornice. Tripartite fixed timber display window with overlights having leaded coloured margin lights and panelled stall-riser. Two square-headed door openings to north with double-leaf timber panelled door to ground floor and further timber panelled door giving access to upper floors, both having leaded coloured glazed rectangular overlights.

Capel Street was laid out in 1680 by Humphrey Jervis as a prestigious residential street and named after Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex. By 1800 the street had become one of the city’s principal commercial thoroughfares with the current plot ratios reflecting the layout of that period. This building retains its nineteenth-century proportions and a traditional mid-nineteenth-century shopfront. Trading as a music shop since c.1830, the ground floor has been recently converted into a pub with the retention of the shopfront, interior and window display, maintaining the appearance of what was the longest functioning shop in the city and adding to the overall charm of this historic streetscape.