York Historic Environment Record

Formerly known as: The York Dispensary DUNCOMBE STREET. Medical dispensary and offices. 1897-99. By Edmund Kirby of Liverpool. For Messrs Gray, Dodsworth and Cobb, Solicitors.

MATERIALS: red brick in English garden-wall bond with moulded brick dressings and window mullions and transoms of stone; plain tile roofs, turreted and gabled, with brick stacks; terracotta and wrought-iron finials and snake weathervane. STYLE: Jacobethan Revival.

EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, basement and attics; 13-window front on high plinth. Blocked segment-headed openings in plinth. Projecting centre bay has half panelled double doors with original furniture and 4 tiers of glazed arcaded lights in 4-centred multi-order arch of moulded brick: spandrels carved with stylised flowers and foliage, dated 1788, 1899 to left and right respectively.

Upper storeys form 2-storey canted bay window with half-hexagonal pointed roof. Over doorway is band of blind arcaded tracery and stone panel carved in relief with the City arms and a scroll bearing the words YORK DISPENSARY. Left end bay is set back and treated as square turret with pyramidal roof. Carriageway with shallow 2-centred arch closed by wrought-iron double gates beneath stone panel with PATIENTS ENTRANCE carved in low relief: 3-light windows with transoms on upper floors. Projecting gabled bays on either side of central doorway articulated by half hexagonal shafts rising full height to coped gable with kneelers surmounted by finials. First floor has 3-light windows, three to left, two to right; attics segment-headed lights, in 3 tiers to left, 2 tiers to right. In centre of tripled bays at right end is multi-order doorway with double doors of pegged-on panelling and original furniture, and arcaded overlight with leaded lights. Over door is 3-light window with transoms behind arcaded parapet of traceried round arches of moulded brick. Gabled bay to left has two 2-light ground and first floor windows with transoms and 5-light attic window.

Turreted bay to right has narrow transomed windows on all floors, with square heads in segmental arches on ground and attic floors, flat lintels on first floor. Between projecting bays are 2-light windows with transoms on ground and first floors, dormers with square lattice sashes to attic. Above first floor windows is full-width blind traceried frieze of moulded brick, continued across right return. Roll moulded brick sill strings and string courses likewise returned. Right return: 3-storey 3-bay gabled front. Basement openings glazed. Ground floor windows are of 3 stepped lights with transoms recessed in semicircular arches of moulded brick. Polygonal shafts corbelled out between windows rise to 4-centred arch beneath crow-stepped gable. On first floor, 4-light oriel window is flanked by 3-light windows, all with transoms. Second floor window is of three tiers of segment-headed lights. Brick coped gable end has brick kneelers incorporating rainwater gutter spouts.

INTERIOR: former dispensary staircase rises to attics, with moulded close string, sturdy turned balusters, chamfered newels with finials and pendants, and moulded handrail. Framed newel staircase rises through offices from ground floor to attics, having moulded close string, twisted balusters and moulded handrail. Panelled doors in fluted and fasciated architraves survive throughout building: moulded cornices retained despite later subdivisions.
Listing NGR: SE6016852086

Derived from English Heritage LB download dated: 22/08/2005

NMR Information

List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. District of York, 14-MAR-1997

1050602 Architectural Survey RCHME: Hospitals Project

BF102565 GRAYS DISPENSARY, YORK

People and Organisations

Architect EDMUND KIRBY 1897 1899 Architect based in Liverpool. Referred to in the Bedford Lemere daybooks.

NMR, 2019, NMR data (Digital archive). SYO2214.