The shop was built in 1888 by the Bayes Family. Originally it was a Haberdashery but has been put to various other uses over the last 110 years. Since the early 1960s the premises have been used as an Antiques Shop. [now no 59 Harborough Road]

The facade of the building exhibits a large amount of woodwork in the form of decorated fascias and barge boards, a double fronted shop window with bay window above.

In the past, work was carried out with the aid of ladders but due to regulations and safety factors and maybe also a lack of bravado by present day workmen, extensive scaffolding was the order of the day. On reaching great heights on this, we discovered that some of the exterior woodwork was in poor shape, but considering it had been in place for 110 years we could appreciate this. A lot of the decorative woodwork on the ends of the fascia boards had rotted and fallen off. Much of the woodwork on the side of the building had disappeared at least 40 years ago so we decided to "Go the whole hog" and restore the building to it's former Victorian glory! The building is constructed of pink and white Cambridge bricks. All door and window lintels are of York stone. A carved stone pediment showing a coat of arms is above the main door to the residential part of the house.

The series of photographs taken in 1998 when the property was renovated and the chimneys made safe.
Sheila Sherwood	1998 Finishing the work	Don Sherwood

The building has been renovated several times in the past as several signatures and dates on the brickwork, under the eaves, bear witness. It has not been easy to decipher them but the probabilities are

M.Wheeler         J.Isby 1892 G.King    1912       A.How ? Burn off by Len Saters Oct. 1936 Painted by ? 1954
Note: The only one of these names we can find information about is M Wheeler who applied for planning permission for 3 houses in 1893 - see council plan 215

Survey of the property	Repairing a chimney

The side of the building needed the complete replacement of the fascia boards with four lengths of timber 20' x 10" x 1½". These had to be shaped and broadened by 18" at each end in order to facilitate the decorative roundels etc. The original boards on the front of the building were kept but new roundels and other additions had to be made. The whole was completed by adding monograms in Lincoln green and red at the top of the building showing the original date of the building and the date renovations were completed.

This chimney was lowered ........ but	.... this one took five times longer!

Further News The building has three chimney stacks and like most Victorian buildings the stacks have large oversavings at the top. Two of these were in need of attention and the smaller of the two was well out of the perpendicular. We tackled this first by taking it down by twelve courses of bricks. The chimneypots were set into a 4" thick slab of York stone, 5" of which had to be cut off each side to make it fit the reduced size of the stack. We were not very happy with the finished appearance as we had taken the "simple" way out and regretted it. This mistake was not to be repeated with the larger chimney so we removed ten courses of bricks and rebuilt the stack putting the oversail back. This work took five times as long as the smaller chimney but we were satisfied with the result and thought that the time and effort was worthwhile.

Replacement facia	A roundel

Sheila painting	The finishing touch in place