35 The Close, Quayside Bar

Once known as Dove's Warehouse and now a restaurant and public house (Quayside Bar), 35 The Close is the only example of a late C16 merchant's house with its own wharf remaining on the Close. It was listed Grade II* in 1976 with the following description:
'House and warehouses. Possibly Cl6 and later. Render; sandstone; brick with some ashlar dressings; timber frame; renewed pantiled roofs with some Welsh slate. 3 ranges, the rear originally on river edge but now facing onto artificial fill, around courtyard with enclosing wall on street front. High wide rendered wall, containing boarded double vehicle doors, links 2 rendered gables; tripartite sashes in left gable, wood-mullioned openings at right. Rendered house at rear of yard: 2 builds; left of 2 storeys, 3 bays with wide doorway at left, sash with glazing bars in centre and tripartite sash at right; upper-floor sash in wide box and Venetian window with broad glazing bars. Right build of 2 higher storeys and 2 bays projects slightly and has 6-panelled door in wooden architrave with bracketed cornice. First floor 2-light casement and renewed sash. Left range, of stone and brick in 2 builds, has 2 storeys, 5 and 5 bays. First build, attached to house, has varied openings with segmental brick arches, vehicle entrance at left and boarded door and overlight at right. Some sashes; upper wood-mullioned openings. Second build has first-floor 4-panelled door and sash windows. Slate roof hipped to street. Right range of stone has 2 storeys and attics, 8 irregular bays. Irregular stone arch to boarded ground-floor entrance in second bay; blocked arch in fifth bay has chamfered elliptical head. Stone steps to boarded door under stone lintel in third bay. Stacks of loading doors, the top under gable, in bays 4 and 7; crane above that in bay 7. Wood mullions to square openings with flat stone lintels on first floor; roof has 3 segmental-headed dormers. Interior of left range, first build, has arched tie beam and king-post roof, the ridge set in one side of broadened posts.'
The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) recorded the building in June 1986. Keith Falconer (Investigator Industrial Monuments) determined that the scarf joint between truss A and the floor beam pointed to a late medieval date, but pre-dating 1650.
The late medieval date was confirmed by a dendro date - estimated felling date 1514 (year spans tiebeams 1365-1513; outermost ring of principal rafter 1513; 5 timbers sampled). Published in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 22, 1991, Tree-Ring Dates, p 41.
Grace McCombie (2009) says the building is U-plan with C19 gables. Facing east, the long wall of the east range and the exposed timber-framed gable of the south range. The L-shaped SE corner is the oldest, with a roof with kingposts set into arched tie-beams and a ridge set square in the side of jowls in the kingposts and braced lengthwise; trees felled 1514. This local roof type is also found in 14-16 Cloth Market and at Trinity House. Facing the courtyard, the east range has two builds, the south part older, both of brick but with some stone below or behind; the south range is rendered, timber framing above stone, and sashes with broad glazing bars in the first-floor Venetian window, an early C18 alteration; west range of reused stone with early ground-floor openings to the yard, and two stacks of loading bays. The ventilation dormers are of 1989. The west range projects at the south, and still has loading doors: at high tide goods could be transferred from boats. Now separated from the water by the promenade built in 1984-5. Dated C16th.
LISTED GRADE 2*