Historic England has received an application to assess 6 Northbrook Street, Newbury for listing. The building is not currently listed and although there was some confusion resulting from its later inclusion in an amended address to the listing for the adjoining Grade II listed building to the north (currently 7-11 Northbrook Street – National Heritage List for England 1210831) this has now been resolved with a minor amendment address change. The building is within the Newbury Town Centre Conservation Area.

6 Northbrook Street was built in 1886 for the draper, William Clark who had occupied the previous shop on the site since at least 1861. The architect was Walter Henry Bell (1860-1932) of 31 Cheap Street, Newbury. By the late-1890s the building was occupied by another draper, Alfred Camp, who already had a shop at numbers 8-9 Northbrook Street known as ‘Alfred Camp’s Drapery Bazaar’. In 1920 the business was merged with adjoining shops to create Newbury’s first department store ‘Camp Hopson’ which opened in May 1921. Camp Hopson vacated numbers 13 and 14 in the late 1920s but continued to occupy numbers 6-12 until substantial alterations in 2004-6 when it moved out of numbers 6 and 12, with number 6 becoming a branch of HSBC bank. The building was largely rebuilt behind the original frontage and extended to the south across the former Waldegrave Place.

The original brick, three-storey, street frontage of 6 Northbrook Street is of two bays, each with a separate gabled tile roof and stone dressings. The additional early-C21 bay to the south is flat-roofed with a glazed frontage. The original bays are flanked by shallow brick pilasters and the elevation has stone string courses and coping to the gables. On the first floor are a pair of canted bay windows with timber-framed glazing with leaded transoms and stone hoods and pediments connected by a string course. The second floor has a pair of timber-framed double casement windows, again with leaded transoms. The brick segmental arches have decorative stone keystones above which, in the gables are a pair of oeil-de-boeuf windows with four keystones. The ground floor frontage dates from 2006 and has plate glass windows and doors and a broad fascia panel running across all three bays. The interior is understood to be completely modern in structure and fittings.

Based on the information provided and with reference to the DCMS Principles of Selection and our Selection Guides, 6 Northbrook Street, Newbury is not recommended for listing for the following principal reasons:

Degree of architectural interest:

* the building is a typical example of late-C19 historicist high-street commercial architecture, competently carried out by a local architect and reflecting the paired gables of the C17 Grade II* building to the north (NHLE 1290298) which also formed part of the original frontage of Camp Hopson, Newbury’s first department store. It does not, however, have the same degree of architectural and historical interest as the listed components of this frontage and does not have special interest in a national context;

* the building has been heavily altered so that only the upper storeys of the façade survive and it has a C21 southern extension and ground floor. From the available evidence, the interior is also of C21 date and has none of its original plan form or fittings surviving.

Degree of historic interest:

* the building has some local interest as part of the disparate façade of Camp Hopson, which opened in May 1921. This is not, however, an early example nationally, as department stores had existed in England since the mid-1860s.

CONCLUSION

6 Northbrook Street, Newbury does not meet the criteria for statutory listing. It is, however, of local interest as a characterful late-Victorian element within the townscape and as part of the original frontage to Camp Hopson.