Yeovil's Virtual Museum

46 & 48 princes street

(East Side) - An Eighteenth Century Town House

 

This former Town House in Princes Street, now split into two shop premises, was built around 1750 and is the second-oldest building in the area - its next-door neighbour being the oldest. Again, behind the colour wash and modern shop frontages, it is possible to visualise the former fine house of red Yeovil bricks with complementary golden Ham stone dressings under a clay tiled roof. 

This was the home and medical practice of William Shorland in the 1850s.

As seen in the photograph below, during the late 1970s/early 1980s it was the premises of Channing's toy shop.

The following description is from the Somerset Historic Environment Record -

Town house now a shop. Circa 1750. Brick and stone dressings, now all colour-washed; plain clay tiled roof behind parapet and between coped gables, with brick chimney stacks at each end. 2-storeys. Modern shop front extends across whole of ground floor: rusticated stone quoins, simple stone cornice, brick parapet with thin stone coping: to first floor, 3-modern sash windows set in plain openings with flat gauged brick arches with keystones: the centre a 4-pane wide single window, those flanking being paired, without glazing bars.  

 

 

A photograph of the 1950s of the block of former seventeenth and eighteenth town houses on the eastern side of Princes Street, to the south of North Lane.

 

This colourised photograph features in my book 'Yeovil From Old Photographs'

Photographed (I think) in the late 1970s when 46 & 48 were Channing's toy shop, 44 was Widger's decorator's shop, 42 was Thorne's hairdresser and tobacconist and 40 was the W.I. Market (before it moved to Hendford, near to the Butchers Arms).

 

46 & 48 Princes Street. Channing's sold toys and prams.

 

This 1990s photograph shows the premises still as a single unit and home to Arts & Interiors run by Brenda and Phil Drayton.

 

This photograph features in my book 'Now That's What I Call Yeovil'

Also photographed in the 1990s.

 

Photographed in 2008 in its really yucky paint-job. Brainwave was a charity shop.

 

 Photographed in 2013. At least the dreadful pink has faded a it. Pico was a cheap-end, bring-your-own-booze pizza restaurant.

 

Allied Carpets, seen here in 2014, didn't last long. The left hand side is presently (November 2016) empty.