89-90 Church Street and the Vaulted Cellar Beneath

89-90 is the corner building on the right

89-90 is the corner building on the rightClick Image
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This article was original published inside the larger article about 91-92 Church Street - The Old Curiosity Shop

Permission was obtained from the owners of Elizabethan Pine to carry out a detailed examination of the cellar. Entrance is now through a trapdoor on the right-hand side of the shop, which is normally covered by a fitted carpet.

Following refurbishment by the previous owners, the cellar is now quite dry, with a concrete floor. The roof has four diagonal ribs, with a continuous rib conjoined with two part-ribs, that enter the wall next to the stairs. All the ribs end on corbels about 50 cms. (18 inches) from the floor. The ribs and corbels are devoid of any carved decoration or bosses, and the infill is with cut stone.

The walls are of similar construction of low-grade stone. The rear wall and the one adjacent to Church Street have an unusual discoloration on individual stones, in colours ranging from deep purple, brown and yellow, covering quite large areas in some parts of the wall. The stone may have come from the ochre rich stone of the Forest of Dean, as the ore in the Forest has this range of colours. The colour is proportional to the percentage of iron in the stone.¹

The original extention

The original extentionClick Image
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There are two doorways in the cellar, but both have been bricked up. That on the road side has early sandstone door pillars and a carved lintel; above this was the normal entrance from the road, similar to other Church Street properties. The stones at the bottom of the door have grooves where wheels or runners have worn them down.

To the far left in a comer is a half-concealed window; the top of the stonework can be seen from the street just above the pavement near the comer of St. Mary’s Lane. In the past it could have been used as a coal-chute, but this seems unlikely if the entrance from Church Street was in use.

The doorway or opening in the wall facing Church Street was probably bricked up with stone when a property was built onto the rear of the shop. If the cellar was used as a dwelling this is where the fireplace or hearth must have been, as now there are only boards above the doorway, where the chimney stack would have been prior to the rebuilding in this century of the premises above.

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The only entrance to the cellar, the stairs, has a newly-built wall on the left, probably built when the house next to 90 was demolished about 1870, the cellar beneath filled in and the road widened. This would have meant the loss of about a third of the vaulted cellar, as is shown by a horizontal rib in the cellar, which would have been the middle of the twin quadripartite vaulted cellar. It can be clearly seen where three ribs join a corbel to the side of the window.

Contemporary writings show that in the past the vaulted cellar has been many things, from the church of the townspeople, a St. Mary's outside the monastery, to a public house. The Victoria County History confirms that it is the oldest domestic building in Tewkesbury.

James Bennett wrote: "Various are the conjectures as to the object for which the ancient building, at the corner of St. Mary" s Lane, was originally designed. The roof is vaulted with numerous heavy ribs, moulded with foliage, roses, &c. at the intersections; and there is an ambry or cupboard on each side of the entrance."⁵

This must have been a description of the chamber that is now filled in and under the road, possibly the last viewing before demolition.

If, as suggested, it was a domestic property, Bennett was describing the main living accommodation and entrance, uncannily like the illustration of the vaulted cellar in Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop.

Census Data 1841-1891

Census Data 1841-1891