Sitting on top of medieval vaulted stone cellars, which also ran out under Wine Street, the more prominent part of the structure was No.

By 1866, under the auspices of hatter Mr T.W.Tilly, it had gained fake battlements[1] with cannon, a weather vane, a flagpole and a Grenadier Guardsman sign (now in the care of the City Museum).

These plans were dropped after the Lord Mayor used his casting vote against them,[4] however the lower storey was cut back by 8.5 feet (2.6 m) in 1908 to accommodate the pavement so that the junction could be eased.

Both of the original houses, though different in style, reflect the local vernacular; for example the High St facade of No.1 has many similarities with the surviving Llandoger Trow pub in Bristol.

A photograph taken immediately after the raid [7] shows that only 4 of the 5 storeys of the High Street facade and a small section of the Wine Street return remained, the inside having been completely burnt away and the tottering facade only held up by the inner steel skeleton (badly twisted in the fire) which had been inserted in 1908 as part of the rebuild.

[8] Three days later on 27 November 1940 an army demolition team pulled the remains down by cables attached to a lorry to make the corner safe.

According to an eye-witness account,[9] the demolition took considerable effort as the steel frame was connected to the boundary walls of Jones and Company department store on either side in multiple places.