and Coffee Rooms
When you walk down Northgate Street, it's nice to imagine, rather than experience, what goes on at the Commercial News Rooms. The title gives it away.
The Commercial Coffee Room and News Room, was designed by the Chester architect Thomas Harrison and built in 1808. What was it for?
The men behind it decided that Chester, Liverpool and Manchester deserved a place where gentlemen could read the newspapers and sample coffee in the comfort of a club.
Up the walkway, you'll find the Commercial Inn, built to Harrison's designs in the centre of a courtyard.
Just imagine it, on the cusp of the eighteenth century, a real coffee and news room. The architecture is quite different too; the building has an elegant two-storey, three-bay facade of sandstone ashlar.
Look up at the news room and you'll see it's supported with ionic half columns, which carry a pediment, providing light to the former news room.
Now, instead of being managed by major merchants of the 19th century, in 2011 it's known as The City Club, and it's private.
Markman Ellis gives a good account of the Coffee House Culture in a collection under his editorship:
"Coffee-houses provided a forum for exchanging views and nurturing public opinion across the social spectrum...The distinct properties of of the coffee-house were recognised in the period by natural philosophers, antiquarians and historians...The coffee-room encouraged scientific culture and became a precursor of the laboratory: science became a public matter."
Editor: Markman Ellis
Eighteenth Century Coffee House Culture
4 Volume Set: 1840pp: 2006
Other information
John Champness 2005 Thomas Harrison Georgian Architect of Chester and Lancaster 1744 - 1829
(Occasional Papers Centre or North-West Regional Studies at the University of Lancaster)
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