Lower Westgate Street

Of the four streets that have survived from Gloucester’s Roman origins, Westgate Street, albeit not exactly on the line it was in its Roman form, is the most historic in terms of the number of listed properties located along it.

The now largely pedestrianised street runs slightly north of its Roman antecedent, in a slightly curving line from The Cross in the city centre, where the four ancient cardinal streets meet, down to the River Severn. It passed through the long since dismantled Roman city wall – which ran along the line of modern day Berkeley and College Streets – and crossed a now vanished channel of the River Severn (variously named Old or Little Severn) at Foreign Bridge, where today’s St. Oswald’s Road runs. From there the street ran to the east channel of the Severn we know today, which it crossed via the gated Westgate Bridge, where the modern-day bridges span the river.

Westgate Street is home to fifty-six listed sites located on or just off it. This article covers the twenty-seven found along the stretch running outside the original city walls. Some of them mentioned in this article, such as the Folk of Gloucester, are or soon will be fully covered in separate articles. For the listed buildings inside the line of the former city walls, see the Upper Westgate Street gallery.

The more recently built properties went up in the 19th century, but may incorporate elements of earlier structures. The 15th century of Shakespeare’s day peeps through at Nos. 64 and 66, the latter looking every bit the street elder with twin gables and tudor-style overhang. No. 66 had, by 1998, become structurally unsound, to the point that it was placed on the Historic England Buildings at Risk Register. The issue was addressed in a 2009 renovation which also recreated the historically authentic rendering over the previously exposed timber framing.

Two doors down, No. 70 – flanked on either side by two of the only three non-listed properties on this stretch of the pedestrianised street – was built c.1754, when North America still comprised thirteen colonies of British subjects.

Nos. 74 & 76 appear as a single block, though late-19th century photos show No. 74 as a jettied Tudor-style building still yet to be redeveloped to match No. 76, which retains in the attic elements of the 14th-century merchant's house that preceded it and which still sits above a 13th-century cellar.

Across the street, Shire Hall is largely a modern building notable for being fronted by its predecessor’s portico and flanking wings. These were designed by the architect of the British Museum in London and originally installed 1816, the year after Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo.

After the pedestrian zone ends, the average age of the listed buildings increases by two centuries, as if to compensate for the modern, non-listed developments that begin to line the street. This is where the street’s only grade I listed buildings can be found: Dick Whittington’s – the 15th century merchant’s house believed to have been built for the mayor of London – and its neighbour, the 12th-century Church of St. Nicholas with its pronounced lean.

Across the road, later alterations disguise the 15th- and 16th-century origins of Hyatt House, Nos. 117–119 and the Lower George Hotel (now inn), but the timber-framing and Tudor overhangs of The Folk of Gloucester make its three street-front properties look every bit the 15th and 17th century of their origins.

The final listing on this stretch of Westgate street before it crosses the River Severn and becomes the A417 is the Almshouses. These continue the hospice tradition of the site begun in the 12th century by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which the Almshouses replaced in 1790, around the time France was descending into revolutionary chaos.

Included in this article are the originally 15th-century, timber-framed buildings (Nos. 5–11) that line College Street, just off Westgate Street, and their younger neighbour, the brick-built No. 3, put up in 1825.