Three Old Arches is a building located at 48 Bridge Street, Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. Together with the adjacent building at No. 50, it has been designated by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 as a Grade I listed building. The buildings incorporate part of the Chester Rows

Chester Rows

Chester Rows consist of covered walkways at the first floor behind which are entrances to shops and other premises. At street level is another set of shops and other premises, many of which are entered by going down a few steps...

. The stone frontage at the street and row levels of No. 48 is considered to be the earliest shop front still surviving in England. It was once the largest known medieval town house in the Chester Rows, and the stone-walled hall at the row level extending to No. 50 was the largest hall set parallel to the rows in Chester.

History

The building was constructed in the 13th century. During the 14th century it was extended to the south (into what is now No. 50), when the hall, set parallel to the rows, was built. During the 20th century part of the building was used by William Jones, a grocer. In the 1960s the business was taken over by the department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 of Owen Owen

Owen Owen

Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom.- The man :Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62....

, but this closed in 1999. The ground floor continues to be used as a shop.

Exterior

At the level of the row are three round-headed chamfer

Chamfer

A chamfer is a beveled edge connecting two surfaces. If the surfaces are at right angles, the chamfer will typically be symmetrical at 45 degrees. A fillet is the rounding off of an interior corner. A rounding of an exterior corner is called a "round" or a "radius"."Chamfer" is a term commonly...

ed arches, the piers

Pier (architecture)

In architecture, a pier is an upright support for a superstructure, such as an arch or bridge. Sections of wall between openings function as piers. The simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, although other shapes are also common, such as the richly articulated piers of Donato...

 of which pass down to the ground level, at the sides of the windows and entrance of the shop at this level. Above the arches, in Gothic script

Blackletter

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...

, is the inscription "Three Old Arches". Duplicated at the tops of the piers, between the arches, is the date "1274 AD". Above the arches are three sash window

Sash window

A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels or "sashes" that form a frame to hold panes of glass, which are often separated from other panes by narrow muntins...

s, each with 12 panes and, in the top storey is another sash window, this one being tripartate, with 4:12:4 panes.

Interior

In the undercroft

Undercroft

An undercroft is traditionally a cellar or storage room, often brick-lined and vaulted, and used for storage in buildings since medieval times. In modern usage, an undercroft is generally a ground area which is relatively open to the sides, but covered by the building above.- History :While some...

 of No. 48, the original stone pillars have been replaced by cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

 columns. The undercroft of No. 50 retains its original stone arch. Much of the medieval stone hall remains at the level of the row, which extends between Nos. 48 and 50. It is the largest stone-walled hall set parallel with the row in Chester, measuring over 12m by over 8m, and it contains four medieval doorways. The hall also contains a 16th century open fireplace with a 19th century cast iron range

Kitchen stove

A kitchen stove, cooking stove, cookstove, or cooker is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven, used for baking.In the industrialized world, as stoves replaced open...

.