York Historic Environment Record

YORK SE6051NW ST HELEN'S SQUARE 1112-1/28/936 (South East side) Nos.2-8 (Even) GV II Includes: No.2 DAVYGATE. Bank, restaurant, shops and offices. 1929-30. By TP Bennett. MATERIALS: red brick in Flemish bond and sandstone ashlar, with ashlar dressings; shopfronts of ashlar with bronze window frames: parapet of brick panels, broken by balustraded lengths, between piers of brick or ashlar, with moulded stone coping. Roof of Westmorland slates, hipped at each end, with brick stacks, and pilastraded octagonal cupola with lead ogee cap, surmounted by wrought-iron finial and weathervane, in centre. EXTERIOR: 3-storeys; 9 bays to St Helen's Square, 9 bays to Davygate, 4 bays to Coney Street, and tripartite curved corner bays. Upper floors to St Helen's Square articulated by giant Ionic pilasters, the centre bay treated as frontispiece with coupled columns and pilasters supporting plain frieze and moulded modillion cornice which breaks forward over outer bays, and broken central pediment with garlanded cartouche of York City arms in tympanum. Shopfronts of plain pilasters with moulded bases and capitals, and broad fascia beneath moulded cornice on triglyph brackets. No.2 has panelled double doors in corner bay, in architrave of slender pilaster jambs beneath fluted frieze and moulded cornice, and pediment formed of volutes and palmette; overlight divided by squat pilasters with palmette bases. Similar door at left end. Small-pane fixed light windows made tripartite by pilasters beneath fluted friezes and moulded cornices, and transom lights divided as door overlights; risers of moulded raised panelling between fluted pilaster strips. Shopfront to No.4 altered. Entrance to Nos 6 and 8 in Davygate return is glazed open metalwork panel of geometric design in brass surround, with glass and bronze canopy above. Subsidiary glass door to St Helen's Square front, at right end of plate glass windows with top panels of coloured glass: lower part of windows protected by balustrade of open metalwork panels similar to that in main door. Coloured glass panels in canopy and window heads are leaded and of abstracted leaf trail design. Shopfront returns on Davygate front and incorporates service passage gate and screen of square section railings at left end. Frontispiece on St Helen's Square has tripartite sash windows on first and second floors. First floor window has keyed Gibbs surround beneath moulded cornice on consoles; second floor centre window is radial-glazed in round-arched keyed and eared architrave, with moulded sill over shaped apron. Elsewhere first floor windows generally are 18-pane sashes with flat arches of gauged brick; on second floor 12-pane sashes with tiled sills over raised brick aprons. In corner bays and some others, first floor windows have triple-keyed architraves with broken pedimented hoods on scrolled consoles, and second floor windows with moulded stone sills over moulded aprons. INTERIORS: not inspected. (Bartholomew City Guides: Hutchinson J and Palliser DM: York: Edinburgh: 1980-: 157; ). Listing NGR: SE6018651934